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& ♦on 




THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 
FREDERICK NIVEN 



THE LADY 
OF THE CROSSING 


By 

FREDERICK NIVEN 

ID 

AUTHOR OF “THE S. S. GLORY,” ETC. 



NEW Hi Bp YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




& 




Copyright, ipip 
By George H. Doran Company 


MAV 24 1919 

Printed in the United States of America 

© CI.A515C26 


TO 

EX-QUARTER-MASTER 
SERGEANT JAMES MILROY 
OF BRITISH COLUMBIA AND 
NEUVE CHAPELLE 








FOREWORD 

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN 

A LTHOUGH the scene of this book is the 
West of America and, on cursorily flipping 
the pages, one’s eye does not encounter the 
words Florence , Venice , Simla , Quartier Latin, 
Shepheard’ s Hotel , or Cafe de la Paix , it is not a 
novel of revolver-shots. A story can be written of 
Western America in which revolvers are in abeyance. 
There is much to be said for Gilbert’s 

“Hearts just as pure and fair 
May beat in Belgrave Square 
As in the lowly air 
Of Seven Dials!” 

It is a whimsical plea for the open mind. Formulae 
for books may make the writing of a certain kind 
of book easier, may make reviewing of a certain 
kind easier, and the life of the harassed assistant 
librarian easier; but they won’t do for me and, I 
trust, for you. One should go everywhere with an 
open mind, meet everybody with an open mind. 

The point is that one never knows. One day we 
may even read of a novel that “no thinking man can 
ignore this work,” or that “here we have a reading 
of Life,” and on taking the volume up find that, 
after all, despite such phrases, it is not a special 
Lancet article gone astray. 

Foregone conclusions regarding Books, Men and 
Women are surely sometimes wrong. So far from 


realising that Western America does not always con- 
note Dime Novel, there are those who appear to 
think it has a monopoly of Dime Novel to the ex- 
tinction of the possibilities in that vein of all other 
lands. So strong is this belief, in the minds of those 
who would stereotype all, that the novelist who may 
gaily and seriously attempt a Dime Novel with the 
scene laid in, let us say, Malaysia runs high risk of 
knowing the pang it is commonly said Great Men 
know, the pang of being misunderstood; and of ex- 
periencing the consternation of seeing his beloved 
Shocker put on a shelf otherwise labelled. 

I write my foreword with only one plea — that 
this story may be read without assumption regarding 
what a book of Western America must be about. 
We live in grim and unbalanced times. Later one 
may write lots of thoughts that just now one ponders 
over. This book has no “purpose’’ in the cant, or 
accepted, sense of the word; and maybe so much 
preface may seem out of place for a story that is 
neither inherently salacious nor avowedly philo- 
sophical. 

May it please you at least for an hour or two in 
these days. 


Frederick Niven. 


CONTENTS 


PART ONE: AGITATO 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Cherub with the Arrows . 13 

II. Alexander Franklin, of the “Grand 

Western” 21 

III. Enter Jack Marsden .... 38 

IV. Regarding Timpkin's Goat ... 61 

V. The Day After . .... 72 

VI. Burning his Boats ... . 81 


PART TWO: CAPRICCIOSO 


CHAPTER 

I. “That Not Impossible She” 



page 

98 

II. 

Henderson's Ranch 



106 

III. 

A New- World Garden 



122 

IV. 

Marsden Explains His Actions 


132 

V. 

A Trip up the Lake 



141 

VI. 

An Encounter with Grosset 



154 

VII. 

The Chain-Gang . 



172 

VIII. 

Marsden's First Card . 



185 

IX. 

Marsden's Creed Again 



194 

X. 

Balm in Gilead . 



214 

XI. 

“Killed for Two Bits” 



221 

XII. 

A “Get-Rich-Quick” Chapter 



230 


PART THREE: GRAZIOSO 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Fruit Ranch .... 250 

II. Mildred Throws Down the Glove . 265 

III. The Great Ascent .... 288 

IV. The End of the Journey . . . 296 

V. Why They Did It .... 303 

VI. “Au Revoir” 310 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 



THE LADY 
OF THE CROSSING 


PARTI: AGITATO 

CHAPTER I 

THE CHERUB WITH THE ARROWS 

I T was Sam Haig’s intention to start afresh, an 
intention common enough to frail, yet hopeful, 
human beings. Into his past, upon which he had 
shut the door, we need not inquire here, but may 
take him under observation as he drew near to his 
Mecca, the Western Mecca, the last Mecca of the 
moment. The conductor announced it, strolling 
down the aisle of the swinging Pullman car, swinging 
because of the many curves the train takes on that 
last lap from Columbia Junction, by Galena and 
Placer and Opal Falls, into Kootenay. 

“Next stop Kootenay! Kootenay next stop!” 
intoned the conductor in accents of finality; for at 
Kootenay the spur-line ends, running right down 
into the lake, so that the freight-trains can stand 
alongside the big barges whatever the state of the 
lake’s fullness or shrinkage. 

13 


14 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


On this train, far from the main line, there was 
no porter to flick over the travellers with a switch, 
trying, as some one has described these attentions, 
to discover if a tip was also to be flicked off. The 
men rose, shook down their wrinkled pants, and 
stretched; the ladies smoothed crumpled pleats, 
rubbed their faces with little handfuls of cambric 
and lace or, more defiantly, dabbed on powder, 
peering at their reflections in the mirrors set in 
those plush or velvet bags (“vanity satchels” is the 
sale catalogue name) that hold puffs, powder, and 
spare hairpins. Some of the passengers sat still, 
to be chugged on later another quarter of a mile 
or so, beyond the town depot, to the side of the big 
stern-wheeler at the lake shore, their tired minds, 
glutted with scenery and train rumble, occupied with 
visions of what awaited them there — white painted 
and mirrored dining-saloon; waiters in white duck, 
on the breast of each a brass tag that bore the 
number of his table; white table-cloths, on which 
were menu cards set in holders that if not silver 
at least shone like silver; and there would be soups 
and salads and iced coffees. 

But Sam Haig was detraining at Kootenay. 
stern-wheeler’s dining-room he needed not to vis- 
ualise. He needed not to visualise anything; his task 
was to go forth and discover what was here. What 
he found, stepping from the car to the depot plat- 
form, was a fresh air of which he took a deep 
breath to relieve him of the stale headiness that 


THE CHERUB WITH THE ARROWS 15 


the train forced upon him — a headiness compounded 
of aroma of oranges and apples, acrid tang of loco- 
motive smoke, whiff of boot polish, Parma violet 
scents (several kinds), patchouli (one or two), blat- 
ant peppermint drop scent (of an elderly commer- 
cial traveller) , and the odour of dusty, padded seats 
for base of all. They made a sum total of an at- 
mosphere somewhat like that which engulfs the alert 
debutante on her entrance to a theatre; but this one 
offered a different thrill, the thrill of travel. For 
into the midst of it had come, subtly and bewitch- 
ingly, scents of hot cranberry patches, of sunburnt 
hillsides, of pine and fir. 

On the depot platform Sam drew a deep breath, 
shook down his pants a second time, pulled his 
waistcoat down at the back, and felt for his baggage- 
check. His baggage he could see coming out of 
the car — one suit-case in a cascade of suit-cases, 
cabin-trunks, hold-alls, “grips,” that had been started 
a-going inside the car by an invisible sprite, licensed, 
it would appear, thus to test the strength of locks, 
buckles and straps. All this impedimenta of the 
travellers was only saved from destruction on the 
platform by a hilarious youth who wrestled with a 
waggling truck. 

A resigned group of detrained pilgrims watched 
the avalanche of luggage. None contested (whether 
the straps snapped or held, whether the locks burst 
asunder or remained intact) the baggage-man’s evi- 
dent assumption of right thus to pass through or- 


16 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


deal the baggage in his care. Then, when his brief 
and gloriously crowded moment was over, they fol- 
lowed him and his assistant and the trundled load 
to claim their victorious or vanquished belongings 
in the baggage-room. 

Hotel touts hung upon the heels of the travellers, 
each of whom, as he claimed his kit, was claimed 
by two or three of these touts until he exercised 
the right of a free man and made swift choice of 
one, for the sake of peace. It was the Grand West- 
ern that angled Sam and his suit-case. Grand West- 
ern f Gold Nugget , Hotel Kootenay — it was all the 
same to Sam. Had he arrived with a great deal of 
luggage the driver of the rig might have opened its 
rear door and told him to step inside; but one suit- 
case suggests a young man looking for a start. It 
was an occasion for sociability. 

“Pop up beside me if you like,” said the driver; 
So, with his feet on the suit-case, high-perched be- 
side the genial driver and tout, Sam was driven up 
the hill from the depot, fringes of the overhead 
awning dancing before him. 

It was at the time of small flies, and the horses’ 
ears were ensheathed in cloth coverings, tasselled 
at the top — reminiscent of the ears of the wild-cat. 
Over their withers, too, were light cloths, also with 
pendant tassels, to worry away the worrying flies, 
and there were bells hung to the collars to make a 
silvery melody. Sam took stock of the “city” — 
remarked the first hotels that they passed, with their 


THE CHERUB WITH THE ARROWS 


17 


clients at the doors, big, hefty men of the kind that 
set one wondering where they obtain the money to 
allow of them loafing in town “three sheets in the 
wind.” He remarked the log-shacks in town-lots 
overgrown by grasses and wild flowers, tangles of 
blue and pale blue, and now and then a soaring pur- 
ple or yellow. Then came granite fronts, and next 
to them shacks again. Five-storey store-blocks made 
more diminutive and quaint the crude wooden neigh- 
bour with stove-pipe perkily projecting from the roof. 
The centre of the road was all deep dust. Hotel 
rigs made a procession up hill, and on the level of 
the main street continued with subdued sound — the 
loudest note being that of the harness bells. They 
came to the city’s core, with the blackboards of the 
employment agents leaning against the walls, much 
chalk-writing on them, which gladdened the heart 
of Sam Haig. 

Fruit-stores, barbers’ emporia, soda fountains, 
book-and-drug stores, hardware stores — and the 
Same again — and the same again — told him that here 
was “some town.” It had a holiday air. Not a 
hotel but was topped by a flag-pole. Men swag- 
gered on the side-walks, smoking cigars or eating 
cherries. Young women in cheerful raiment (some 
Chewing gum, some not chewing gum) walked as if 
it was all a play and they the leading ladies, looking 
at none, desiring only to be looked at, carrying van- 
ity bags before them on tip of extended forefinger, 
apparently pointing the way for themselves; or may- 


18 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


be the action was to indicate to the uncouth men in 
which direction they were walking, so that the path 
might be clear before them. 

Other women, who looked as though they found 
life less tense, but who were also fond of bright hues, 
moved to and fro, women less like appendages of 
their own chatelaines, middle-aged women who had 
jolly laughs. 

Away and away overhead the sky arched, suggest- 
ive of shimmering silk from Pekin, and on either 
hand — always visible at the corners of the streets, 
often visible without even aid of a corner — the 
hills stretched back and up, the tone of brown bear- 
skins. Here was another piece of the globe of which 
one might say: “God gave to men all earth to 
love.” 

So thought Sam Haig. And thus thinking, instead 
of viewing all cursorily, he suddenly drew a deep 
breath, was aware that his heart could expand with 
abruptness upon occasion. For at the crossing of 
Dawson and Hoskins (or Dawson Street and Hos- 
kins Avenue, as the purists would say) a dart of 
Some kind — cherub’s or imp’s — went into him as if 
he was posing there for the figure in a valentine. 

“Get up, Sal — get over, Bess,” said the driver, 
and swung the team down Hoskins Avenue, nearly 
pitching Sam off, for his gaze was on a girl. As it 
was he kinked his neck, and only partly the kink 
and partly a sense of propriety prevented him (the 
wheeling into Hoskins Avenue thus wheeling the lady 


THE CHERUB WITH THE ARROWS 


19 


right out of his vision) from turning round the other 
way next, and craning for a second view — “rubber- 
necking” as they call such behaviour there. 

He had been caught by a pose, a movement, a 
curve of neck, flash of eyes, turn of wrist; he had 
been, all in a fraction of a second, enraptured by 
a hand that gathered a flounce as the wearer of 
the adorable confection stepped from the side-walk 
to cross Hoskins Avenue, walking upon Dawson 
Street. But the rig rocked on down hill and drew 
up at the Grand Western . Sam perceived that what 
might be called his choice of hotel was a cheerful 
one — though it is a slack way of speech, and a calm 
onlooker at the body-snatching game that takes place 
at the depot when the trains come in might be in- 
clined to speak here of his destiny rather than of his 
choice, to consider rather that he had been culled 
than that he had chosen. 

The Kootenay upon the opposite corner was in 
the way of being magnificent, with tiled entrance-way 
and palms in tubs in the rotunda, as one could see 
in passing; and the outside was painted red all over, 
and under each balcony were decorations in gold- 
leaf. But the Grand Western was bright white, new 
white, inviolate as the dining-saloon on the lake 
steamers that some of his fellow-passengers had pic- 
tured for their spirit’s ease, and would now be en- 
joying — white from side-walk to attic, nay, to flag- 
pole, even to the flag, a white flag of the kind called 
pennant, that fluttered and folded and, against a sky 


20 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


that made it good to be alive, announced in black 
letters GNDWN; or GRANDWT; or GADESTN 
— all manner of unintelligible combinations for one 
who did not know it was the Grand Western flag 
fluttering and flapping and billowing. 

Sam watched it aimlessly as they came down that 
last lap of Hoskins Avenue, his mind still really 
employed with the vision of the young woman at 
the crossing of Dawson and Hoskins, with a pose 
captured, and fixed on his retina, as one might recall 
a memory of a wave, between curving and breaking, 
or the admirable swerve and careen of a swallow, 
seen and gone, glimpsed and lost. 


CHAPTER II 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN, OF THE “GRAND WESTERN” 

T HE proprietor of the Grand Western was a ca- 
daverous man, his ashen face relieved by hectic 
spot of red on either cheek. He did not, as the 
custom of some hotel proprietors is, keep a six-foot 
person in evening dress in the vestibule, behind a 
sickle of counter, a grim monster hired to scowl 
at the doorway and intimidate intending guests. 
Instead, he strolled about on the hither or public 
side of the desk or counter, hat on, so that a stran- 
ger could not be certain he was the proprietor, and 
could discover his ownership, make certain of him, 
only by walking into the vestibule and looking puz- 
zled. 

He announced himself to Sam, when that young 
man entered the main hall, suit-case in hand, by 
taking a cigar from his mouth and shouting: “George 
— this gentleman!” At that summons “George” 
rose from his reclension in a low-set easy chair be- 
hind the counter, consulted a book on the counter, 
swung it round and held forth a pen. Sam made 
attempt to write his name on the line indicated by 
the clerk’s finger. 

“Oh !” said George, and scratched his head. “Ink !” 
He snatched the pen back, glanced round, found 
21 


22 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


the ink, dipped the pen and again proffered it to 
Sam, who indited his name. George swung the book 
back again, considered the calligraphy, critically it 
seemed, but probably only absently, and next took 
down, from off a nail on the wall, a piece of steel 
a foot long and two inches broad, with a small key 
affixed at one end, and a number cut out, stencil 
fashion, at the other. He growled forth the num- 
ber, dived from sight, threw open a low door under 
the counter, and came to the surface again on the 
outer side with “Come this way.” He grabbed up 
Sam’s suit-case and, gaily whistling, led the way up- 
stairs, put key in lock, opened, took key out and, 
handing it (foot-rule affixed) to the stranger, grunted 
the number again and departed. 

Sam’s number was forty-eight, and closing the 
door he was confronted by the card of regulations 
and admonitions regarding conduct and procedure, 
all about the number of rings for hot water, for 
cold water, down to the comment: “Rope in case 
of fire under bed. Hook to ring on floor beside win- 
dow if necessity arises.” Breakfast, dinner, and 
supper hours were also set forth in no uncertain 
terms. From 6.30 fill 9 “guests” could have break- 
fast, the house evidently catering for early and late 
risers; from 12 till 2, prompt (the italics are not 
mine), they could have dinner; supper from 6.30 
till 8 prompt . 

It seemed, by the card, to be a house of prompti- 
tude, but though Sam rang thrice for hot water 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN 


23 


no reply came. He consulted the direction card 
again. Once was for iced water, twice for cold 
water, thrice for hot. Perhaps, thought he, some 
one downstairs was trying to decide whether he rang 
once thrice, or thrice once. Actually no one down- 
stairs was thinking of him at all. He was simply 
left alone to read the rules and regulations and to 
try to live up to them. As a matter of fact people 
objected to being rung for at all in this booming 
town. He was out West — where the guests are ex- 
pected to observe the rules that relate to their con- 
duct, but to remember that they are out West if 
the hotel-staff ignores printed promises made to them. 
He wondered if he might break the rules that were 
for him to fulfil as lightly as the house broke the 
promises it made regarding itself on its table of 
information. Another card over the wash-hand- 
stand announced: “There is an ablution room at 
end of corridor,” and in the ewer, set in the basin, 
there was no water ; so taking the flimsy towel from 
the rail, a towel one might have read through, he 
prepared to depart in search of that ablution 
room. 

One of the laws of the card (so he noticed, de- 
laying his departure, listening acutely for footsteps 
that might herald the coming of the hot water) 
decreed no smoking in bed. He would be interested 
to know if some one had the duty of sniffer along 
these corridors in the dark hours. He considered, 
noticing that over his door, in the fanlight space, was 


24 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


no glass, that the duty of such a possible serf of 
the house should be fairly easy. There came no 
hopeful sound of footsteps, so he opened his door 
and went out fully expecting to have difficulty in 
finding the wash-room, but the label was large 
enough for the most shortsighted, and with cold 
water and soap of the washing-day order he refreshed 
himself. He ignored the comb that hung affixed to 
the wall, under the mirror, by a steel chain and, 
returning to his bedroom, opened the suit-case in 
quest of his own. It is wonderful how soon an 
adaptable person can feel at home. A few minutes 
later, groomed, he came forth again and (obeying 
the rules upon his card) locked the door, holding 
the foot of steel in one hand, the attached key in 
the other, considering to himself that George’s one- 
handed smartness in unlocking was matter of prac- 
tice. 

The corridor was long, the staircase of several 
flights, and on the way down, feeling a fool carrying 
that foot of steel, he thrust as much as he could 
into his hip pocket, the key folding down at one end 
like the small blade of a knife. On reaching the 
ground floor the odour of soups and frying meat led 
him to the dining-room across the vestibule, and 
the clerk, standing behind his counter, did not ask 
if he had locked his door, and if so where was the 
key. After all perhaps all the rules could be ignored ! 
Or was it that the foot of steel was supposed to be 
sufficient to prevent the absent-minded from pass- 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN 


25 


ing the comptoir without handing it over? All 
that George said was: “Are you going to 
eat?” 

“Yes,” replied Sam. 

“What’s your number?” 

“Forty-eight,” said Sam. 

“Forty-eight — supper — go right ahead,” chanted 
George. 

And Sam forgot all about the key until, sitting 
back at the end of the meal, the steel progged him 
in the waist. He was in absent-minded mood. If 
he was really going to begin afresh in this hustling 
new town he would have to blink his eyes, wipe 
the dreaminess from them, focus them coldly, alert 
for the main chance. As it was, he did not entirely 
please the waitress at his table. He saw her but 
seemed unimpressed. Her coiffing and powdering, 
her red lips, her rigidity from just under shoulders 
to knees (a wondrous rigidity that forced her to go 
tip-tapping in little mincing high-heeled steps upon 
her beat across the polished floor between pantry 
and table) — all these charms, that made some cli- 
ents bashful and others bold, did not banish his air 
of abstraction. 

As he sat there over supper he glanced from time 
to time through the window, less in a condition of 
hoping to see again the lady of the crossing than 
of thinking: “Perhaps she might make another 
transit here.” In his imagination she made the tran- 
sit. He still perceived the sweep of neck, flash of 


26 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


eyes, turn of wrist, and the hand that gathered the 
flounces of her adorable wrappings. 

Supper over, the Salvation Army band platoon put 
her at least temporarily out of his mind. It came 
up the street with great to-do under the last of the 
witching sunset and the first of the genial lamps, the 
colonel — in great form — now dancing before it lead- 
ing, anon turning his back in the direction of prog- 
ress and skipping backwards, waving his arms in 
the manner of a riotous concert-conductor. As in 
pontifical processions there spreads a sense of re- 
sentment or of acquiescence toward the assumption 
of majesty, so now spread the sense of laissez-faire 
toward the gaiety. There were those who carried 
cornets in the procession, and there were mando- 
lines, and guitars, and a violin, as well as many 
tambourines. 

The platoon paused at the corner of Dawson 
Street and Hoskins Avenue, and after the colonel 
had shouted a prayer to the fading and dreamy 
blue of the sky over that mountain city, the man 
with the guitar (a very rollicking blade) strummed, 
and broke into an adaptation of a song: “Just tell 
her that you saw me . . . ” — a popular lilt of the 
moment. A man who looked like a hanger-on, a 
demented bit of human flotsam, stood forth and 
harangued on and on, a note as of terror in his 
voice. Up and up it went, the colonel eyeing him — 
then suddenly drowning him out with another song. 
The demented one, stunned, moved backward, 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN 


27 


snuffed out by the volley of popular catch adapted. 
After that was over a pretty fair-haired Swede girl 
played the violin and, her solo finished, stepped amid 
the audience with a collecting tambourine, while one 
of the subalterns, with great verve, twanged his 
banjo and broke forth in some new rendering of 
“Who’s that a-calling?” Farther up the street the 
closed opera-house looked down with mute expres- 
sion. It had been built to be photographed for the 
boom pamphlets, but so far no touring company had 
entered it. 

From the vestibule of the Grand Western Sam 
looked out and marvelled. He had seen Salvation 
Army bands before, but he had never seen the crack 
corps of the boom towns, designed to cope with the 
attractions of visiting vaudeville crowds, of lively 
saloons, of faro-banks and poker-tables' — thinly dis- 
guised on the front as skittle-alleys. At the rear 
of these skittle-alleys, by the way, you could, if 
you wished, lose your month’s wages in five min- 
utes. On either side of the entrance stood a man 
skilled in the study of physiognomy; and if anyone 
with a detective’s eye entered he clapped his hands, 
and the place was at once a skittle-alley and nothing 
more. But Sam, in his innocence, strolling round 
after supper, thought the skittle-alleys were only 
what they professed to be. 

The Salvation Army platoon was as full of verve 
as ever when he returned to the corner of Hoskins 
Avenue after his first survey of his new town. A 


28 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


vigorous turn had just ended, and the colonel bawled 
forth an invitation to all those standin’ around to 
come right up to the hall. The big drum went 
boom, boom; the platoon marched away, briskly, in 
a quick-step, the laissez-faire crowd melted ; the show 
was over. The platoon — at a kind of acceleration 
of the quick-step — veered away uphill to its hall, 
the demented plain-clothes person who had given 
testimony borne along in its midst like a cork on a 
wave. And now, the band gone, Sam discovered 
that all the town was pouring forth music. There 
came to his ears a multitude of sound — of automatic 
piano-players, of gramophones and, thinly, amid 
these other sounds, tinkling of pianos, and ever and 
again, up and down the street, single notes as of 
fairy bells. If one listened one could hear a click 
before and a clang after each of these single notes, 
for money changed hands ceaselessly in the booming 
city, and every store had its automatic check-your- 
assistant till, against which every assistant (fired 
with the get-rich-quick spirit) pitted his brains, to 
evolve a “system.” You can see the assistants, when 
the boss is not near, looking sideways at the strange 
device, mouths twisting, eyes considering. 

The din and laughter and rub-a-dub of heels went 
on like an orchestration. The cool, nay the cold, 
of evening came down; scents of the surrounding 
mountains poured through the streets with the light 
night breeze. Though the “city” was still wide 
awake, Sam, after his journey, was ready to sleep; 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN 


29 


so he turned into the hotel. George, behind the 
counter, rose to find his key. 

“Forty-eight you are, ain’t you?” he asked. 
“Forty-eight. Why it ain’t here !” 

“No, I have it,” answered Sam, producing the 
foot of steel with the dangling key from his pocket. 
George stared. 

“Well,” he commented, “that foot of steel ain’t 
long enough to worry you, then. If the boss knew 
he’d have two-foot pieces cut. There’s no breaking 
some men from putting a key in their pocket. I 
believe you’re that absent-minded you’d carry a 
thirty- foot rail around town.” 

Responding to that sally with a sleepy smile Sam 
mounted to his room. It struck him as stuffy, de- 
spite the fact that the window was raised and held 
open by an oblong frame of wood enclosing mos- 
quito netting. Perhaps the netting should have 
been at the top to allow of freer ventilation. His 
room being at the rear of the house, looking out 
through the window he could forget the murmuring 
city. The Grand Western stood on the edge of a 
steep hill, and he considered that a guest, caught 
by fire, and resorting to the rope under his bed, 
could lower himself from a front window with non- 
chalance, but that here it would be a difficult matter. 
At the rear of the house, so steeply did the slope fall 
away, it would be like lowering oneself over a cliff. 

The cleared flats below were marked out in lots. 
Sam could dimly see the lines of streets or avenues, 


so 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


but as yet no houses were built there. Beyond the 
flats the long arm of lake lay tapering westward — 
a lake, at that hour, of the last thin tint of blue : 
backed by a tremendous haunch of dark mountain, 
the silhouetted undulations of which were lost in 
the night. High up in that silhouette a light twin- 
kled, telling of some prospector’s camp, and looking 
at it Sam wondered what was before him, what he 
was to find in his search — if this new city was to 
be his Eldorado. 

When he turned back again from considering that 
big night outside, the room was in dusk, with only 
faint shimmer of reflected last light; and the bright- 
est spot in his room was the brass knob of the electric 
light switch. He pressed it down, flooding box 
number forty-eight with the hard, eye-stabbing glare. 
As he unpacked his suit-case, setting out his pyjamas 
and shaving tackle for the morning, flying beetles and 
giant moths dashed against the window, crackled 
and rebounded on the mosquito netting. Box forty- 
eight seemed too stuffy to tempt him yet; he found 
that he was more woolly-headed than sleepy after 
his journey, so, the unpacking over, he put out the 
light, locked his door, and carrying the foot of steel 
with pendant key, passed downstairs and sought a 
balcony at the house’s front. Women’s voices came 
from an open door, big moths flew to and fro in 
the harsh-lit corridors, dancing against the ceiling, 
dashing against the electric globes, swerving in and 
out of the lit rooms. 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN 


31 


“Good-night! I’ll ring you up in the morn- 
ing,” he heard, and the speaker appeared be- 
fore him, making exit from one of the many 
rooms. 

Evidently the lady of the crossing had affected him, 
for he thought this was she, took a deep breath, was 
as one meeting his Fate — and the girl who rustled 
past him wasn’t a bit like her! But he was sure, 
until she was absolutely level, tripping past, that 
this was She. He gulped his heart back under the 
proper rib and continued along the corridor to the 
open door at the end. There, at his approach, some 
one looked inwards to discover who came — the pro- 
prietor enjoying a quiet smoke. 

“Good-evening,” said he. “Pleasant to have a 
bit of coolness after the hot day.” 

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Sam, stepping out beside 
him. “By the way, what is your tariff?” 

“Three dollars a day,” replied the proprietor cas- 
ually. 

“Oh, yes,” said Sam, also casually, but he told 
himself that it was premature for him to be a-thrill 
at the passing of any lady in any city in all his 
lack-lucre world. For dalliance with fair damosels 
one requires dollars as well as a smart suit. This 
place might — or might not — be his Eldorado; but 
he had arrived with the irresponsible sum of nine 
dollars. He glanced at the jowl of the proprietor, 
a non-committal jowl, and plunged. 

“Look here,” he said, “I’ve come to this town 


32 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


with nine dollars. At the end of three days I shall 
be broke- ” 

“Unless you make some money before then. 
There’s to-morrow and the day after,” said the pro- 
prietor, giving him a flicker of a sidelong glance 
and drawing afresh on his cigar. 

“True,” said Sam. 

“You shouldn’t stay here, though,” went on the 
proprietor. 

“That’s just what I was thinking. But if three 
dollars a day is the rate of your town ” 

“Oh, you can pay four — five — six if you like. I’m 
not the top-price hotel. But I’m not the bottom- 
price either. Let me see — nine dollars, you say? 
Well, when did you come here? You had supper, 
didn’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“You could leave to-night, and that would be only 
two bits” (twenty-five cents) “out of your nine dol- 
lars. You can get cheaper tariffs in one or two 
other hotels, and in most boarding-houses.” 

“It’s rather late to go out looking for a boarding- 
house, isn’t it?” Sam asked. 

“All right! If you look at it that way, stay here 
to-night and go in the morning after breakfast. Sup- 
per — bed — breakfast will be two dollars. That leaves 
you seven. You can go to a seven dollar a week, 
cut-rate boarding house. There are such joints in 
town. There’s a whole week ahead of you. That’s 
what I w r ould do if I were you. This house is too 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN 


S3 


expensive,” he ended, but without a hint of sar- 
casm, charmingly, almost naively impersonal for the 
hotel’s proprietor. 

Sam glanced at him to see if he should smile, but 
the proprietor was serious, and friendly. Clearly 
he had detached himself from the hotel and was 
considering Sam’s ways and means in purely objective 
manner. 

“I shall never forget your kindness,” said 
Sam. 

Franklin stared, clearly puzzled. “I shall remem- 
ber you during the next week and hope you’ve got 
on velvet somewhere,” he replied. For himself — 
he had failed so often, bought so many hotels and 
lost on them, that he had long since banished worry 
over finances; and having thus answered his guest’s 
speech of appreciation he looked over the balcony 
railing, tossed away his cigar-end, and departed, 
leaving Sam to imagine that each feminine form 
that appeared among the men on the street below 
was that of the bewitching lady of the crossing and 
then, with a pang, to see that it was not. 

“I’m going to bed!” he growled at last, and 
went. 

In the morning, when he descended from his 
sleeping-box, George was not behind the segment 
of counter, but in his place was a hair-rumpled youth 
wearily chewing gum and staring into the street with 
red and sleepy eyes. To him Sam, suit-case in one 
hand, foot of steel in the other, advanced. 


34 , 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Pulling out?” asked the red-eyed youth. “What’s 
your number?” 

“Forty-eight — but I’m going to have breakfast 
first.” 

“Good. Had your drink?” 

“My drink?” repeated Sam. 

The red-eyed one stared. “Yap. Free drink.” 

“No,” said Sam, doubtfully. 

“Don’t see why you shouldn’t have your drink — 
entitled to it. You can have one free tot a day 
here; it’s a good class house. We don’t go in for 
the three free drinks racket, trying to put our 
guests on the drunk — just the one, in a sociable 
way.” 

“Oh, no, thank you,” said Sam. “I wouldn’t have 
it anyhow — I only came last night and I’m going 
to-day.” 

“Well, I guessed you only came last night. Never 
saw you before. I’m on here night shift — till” (he 
glanced at the clock) “later’n this every morning.” 
He paused and then — “A drink is always a drink,” 
declared the young man, turning the pages of the 
guest-book before him. “There’s a name for a man 
with your way of looking at things. What is it? 
I forget. Quix-something.” 

But a whistle blew in air behind him, like a 
ventriloquial trick, and renouncing Sam he put ear 
to a hole in the wall. 

“Yap?” he said, munching on his gum. “Eh? 
Yap, he’s here right now, I guess. All right. All 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN 


35 


right. Forty-eight, ain’t you?” Ear against the 
tube’s end that slightly protruded from the wall, he 
glanced at Sam. “The boss is in bed. He’s been 
up half the night, but he wants me to tell you that 
you ought to try Timpkin’s Boarding House on Bun- 
yan Street, third up Hoskins Avenue, counting one 
from Dawson Street. Where? Eh? . . . Eh?” 
His head veered back to the wall. “Oh! Second 
or third house from the corner.” 

“That’s very kind of the boss, I’m sure,” said 
Sam. 

“He says it’s very kind of you,” the red-eyed one 
addressed the hole in the wall. “Are you there? 
Huh — gone. Turned over, I guess. All right, give 
me your grip in here until you eat breakfast.” 

It seemed a quaint new world to Sam as he sat 
at breakfast, staring at the lower half of the glazed 
door and reading over and over again the rubric 
thereon : 


/v\ o o si 9 vi i i a 

Early breakfasters here and there bent over the 
meal, and the two young women like mannequins 
stiffly tip-tapped over their morning reflections on 
the polished floor, between tables and pantry, each 
with right hand raised, palm up, fingers backward, 
tray balanced on the palm held so, on a level with 
her head. The place seemed a temple for them — 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


and they a kind of high-heeled, immobile, powdered 
nuns. 

Sam considered, aslant, the nun who ministered 
to him, and thought, rightly or wrongly, that under 
her powder and corsets there was a simple little 
soul. He experienced a touch of anxiety for her 
lest she might sprain an ankle by a fall with all her 
dishes on that slippery floor, treading it in those 
high-heeled shoes. He thought she was in some ways 
reminiscent — just reminiscent — of the lady of the cor- 
ner crossing, but not, of course, “a patch on her.” 

There were men breakfasting who wore black 
shirts, men in white shirts. There was one in Mack- 
inaw coat, despite the summer weather; one in black 
frock coat. Silk handkerchiefs or collars for neck- 
wear made no difference to the tip-tapping damosels. 
They stood beside the tables and dropped their lids 
to take orders and, the order given, tripped away, 
eyes unblinking. And all the men ate demurely, as 
if in a church. 

The ritual fascinated Sam. He was storing up a 
memory of the Grand Western hard-wood floor, the 
scattered tables, the drifting and tapping marion- 
ettes. He was in the half-dreamy, half-tense state 
of one upon the edge of great doings. Breakfast 
over he stepped carefully across the room, as though 
afraid of his own foot-fall, swung the door open, 
and came forth with a subdued air into the vestibule 
where the tousled clerk was remarking to George, 
newly down with smoothed hair: 


ALEXANDER FRANKLIN 


37 


“Well, I’ll get to bed.” He espied Sam. “Give 
tEis gentleman his grip, George,” said he, and de- 
parted. 

George hoisted the suit-case on to the counter, and 
Sam swung it to the floor, then brought forth his 
small wad of bills — if four bills can rightly be said 
to constitute a wad. 

“Haven’t you paid yet?” asked George. 

“No.” 

“I see — thought perhaps you’d paid the night 
clerk before you went in. Forty-eight. Two dol- 
lars, please. Leaving town?” 

“No. Going to a boarding-house.” He handed 
over a five-dollar bill. “I have only seven dollars 
left and must go easy.” 

“Seven!” exclaimed George. “Why, that’s all 
right. I’ve been there often. That’s nothing. 
There’s nothing singular about you.” He rang open 
his till, frowned at it, tendered the change. “So- 
long.” 

Somehow Sam wished there was something singu- 
lar about having only seven dollars in the world. 
In a way George cheered, but in another he did 
not cheer by that comment. To be “there” often 
did not appeal ! However, out in the street an op- 
timistic air laved him. At the far end of climbing 
Hoskins Avenue was brown hillside, and away above 
the hillside mountains rose resolutely against a clear 
morning sky — a sky nearly white, just shot subtly 
with hints of blue and primrose. 


CHAPTER III 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 

S AM felt a thrill of hope as he carried his suit- 
case up Dawson Avenue. It would scarce 
have surprised him had he stumbled over a 
gold brick at the corner of Bunyan Street. And 
that he did not do so brought no dejection. He 
was again “starting afresh.” At Timpkin’s Board- 
ing House, which stood back from the strip of green 
that bore the sign, as he suddenly discovered, “CIT- 
IZENS, PROTECT YOUR BOULEVARDS!” 
(that green strip on which, for the pleasure of grass 
under-foot instead of echoing plank side-walk, Sam 
had been walking, unaware that it was a boulevard — 
or the part of it that was not to be walked on, but 
especially protected) he found he had to take the 
first steps in the art of tight-rope walking. He had 
not come the length of a wire rope. Here was a 
plank — from the street proper to the house over a 
little gulch. In due course the intervening gulch 
would be filled in; but for the nonce the house stood 
as on an island, entirely surrounded by a moat. 

Still, even the series of planks, laid on spidery 
trestles, from boulevard to porch, aided in the crea- 
tion of a sense of verve; for the mere stepping on 
38 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


39 


them set them a-quiver. The lithe rejuvenated step 
with which Sam approached the house caused them 
almost to bounce, and the result was that he made, 
very definitely, a dancing arrival on the verandah of 
Timpkin’s Boarding House. The gaiety of step 
with which he came to the steadfast footing of the 
porch suggested great gaiety of mind. It would 
require some fortitude to live up to that jocund ex- 
terior, if dollars were not soon forthcoming. 

The house seemed to be deserted. The guests 
were all gone forth to their day’s labour; but a 
Chinaman with a face like smoked ivory appeared 
in the interior and sang a stave which sounded like : 
“Mishatim a gemaln!” Next moment appeared be- 
fore Sam one who was to be to him, if he had only 
known it — but that is to anticipate. Enough to 
say that there appeared before him a man some- 
what after the cast of Alexander Franklin, but with 
a difference. Timpkin was a kind of Franklin with- 
out a license to sell spirits. He had to keep alert for 
such news as did not interest the proprietor of the 
Grand Western , news of shelf-rubbed hams, or of 
cases of eggs that had been dropped in handling and 
were offered at catchy prices to sportsmen ; and then 
he had to cajole his boarders to partake of scrambled 
eggs after they had ordered boiled. 

“Good morning,” said Timpkin. 

“Good-morning,” said Sam. “Can you put me 
np? ” 

Timpkin surveyed him and shot a soiled cuff. 


40 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Oh, I guess,” he answered. “Let me see — first 
floor, two dollars a day.” 

“Well — have you another floor?” stammered 
Sam. 

“Yap — got a floor above at a dollar and a half. 
That’s my cheapest, and it’s surely cheap. It can’t 
be done without Chinese labour and that’s a 
fact.” 

“I must be honest with you,” stammered Sam 
afresh, “I have — I have only seven dollars.” 

“That’s four days at a dollar and a half,” re- 
turned Timpkin, his eyes twinkling, “and a dollar 
left over at the end of the week to hire a canoe on 
the lake, and go paddling out so far from shore 
that you couldn’t swim back.” 

Sam stared, then smiled a smile so greatly stoical 
that Timpkin saw the tale of seven dollars was true 
— was no fable put forward in an attempt to get the 
cut-rate under false pretences. Wherefore Timpkirt 
continued : 

“I don’t know! Maybe I could fix you up if 
you don’t mind sharing a bedroom.” 

Much rather would Sam Haig have owned town- 
lots instead of sharing bedrooms; but there he 
was! 

“That will do quite well for the time being,” 
said he, heroically refusing himself the sigh of one 
hurt by circumstance, expressing himself agreeable in 
cheerful tones. 

“That’s it,” replied Timpkin soothingly. “And 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


41 


when you rustle a job you can go into a room by 
yourself. But I leave that to you.” 

So, his suit-case deposited beside one of the beds 
in a biscuit-box of a room, with window ( minus 
mosquito netting — taking mental note of that lack, 
but philosophically informing himself that at a cut- 
rate of seven dollars a week in a boom town one 
can’t have everything — Sam went forth again in 
quest of fortune. Walking the plank to the boule- 
vard he experienced a new emotion — of annoyance 
at Poverty. He was slightly dashed by the sense 
of cheeseparing, frugality, parsimony, carefulness, 
economy — call it what you will, by a word that 
praises or a word that condemns or a word that 
seems to state without opinion. All were the same 
to him. They all condemned. 

To antidote that sense of skimpiness coming into 
his life he pulled his hat down brigandishly over one 
eye, clamped his lips shut, and tightened his chin. 
Arrived at Dawson Street (named after a great trail- 
breaker of the land who must have known hardships 
of a different kind from sharing a room, and have 
slept easier on scented “fir-feathers,” under fir-trees 
and stars, than Sam was to sleep in that room that 
seemed so necessary although so mean) he turned 
west, unconsciously obeying the maxim of Horace 
Greeley. He did not walk with dulled eyes. His 
eyes roved left and right for clues that might lead 
to dollars — not that he wished to be a millionaire, 
not that he was fired by the aim to “get rich quick,” 


42 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


but because dollars are tokens for food, and for bed 
and for clothes. He perceived that one trade of 
high importance in town was that of carpenter. Ham- 
mers went rub-a-dub all round him; but he noticed 
a carpenter applying for work showing a boss what 
was clearly a union ticket. 

“I,” thought Sam, “am not even in the carpenters’ 
union, to say naught of the less important point 
that I am not even a carpenter!” 

He raised his eyes to the fronts of the houses 
that were built and occupied — and decided that he 
could neither open a rival establishment to the pain- 
less extractor of teeth, nor offer his services to the 
existing one. He could not pull a tooth, even pain- 
fully. Someone, it occurred to him, must write the 
signs. Could he dare to procure palette and brushes, 
and tout round the new and legendless offices as a 
sign-writer? A faint smile puckered the corners of 
his mouth as he dismissed that scheme, reflecting 
that they who ordered a sign might come forth to 
look at it before payment; for he w r as not of those who 
think that all they need to be artist are the tools. 

At the doors of the employment agents he paused 
and read their announcements with a naif expression 
that proclaimed to any who might care to be inter- 
ested in the new arrival that he had not come to 
Kootenay to fill a ready-made berth. He discovered 
that the men wanted energetically enough to ask for 
them on blackboards with white chalk, instead of 
waiting for them to offer their services, were : 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


43 


Miners Barber’s Assist- Swampers 

Muckers ant Teamsters 

Cook Railroad Men Sash and Door 

Assistant Cook Carpenters Men 

Waiter 

No one wanted a manager, or an organiser, or 
a sleeping partner. Sleeping partner was a phrase 
that always delighted Sam. It suggested unlimited 
leisure to potter in the sun while the dividends rolled 
in. 

What the street offered in the negative way was 
as little hopeful: Quick shave; Fresh fruit; Rasp- 
berry drinks ; Parisian cut lounge-suits; Dungarees 
for a dollar; nominal Panama hats for obviously not 
Panama hat prices; others at Panama hat prices; 
and all the way along every other window offered to 
sell him town-lots. It helped him greatly that, when 
he paused for a moment to look at a photograph 
in a real-estate office show-case, he was immediately 
accosted by a man in a blouse and cummerbund, 
smart blue jacket, wide blue pants, knobbly toed and 
shining shoes, modern fob suspended from under the 
sash, and a gold tooth. 

“Evidently,” Sam communed, while the real-es- 
tate man reeled off his patter, “I do not look like 
a paltry seven dollars’ worth!” 

He listened to the New Arabian tale, then said 
he would think about it, and tore himself away. He 
did think about it; it was a romance that led to 


44 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


the verge of depression for a man with only seven 
dollars to buy anything; so he thought of something 
else — looked on the bright side, considered how he 
owned half a room and a whole bed for a week, 
and had twenty-one meals as good as under his belt. 
In this happier frame of mind he arrived at the 
extreme end of Dawson Street, and looked down 
at the depot where he had arrived. 

Only last night! It seemed ages ago. He had 
had two addresses since then. 

There is a creek called Astley Creek brawls down 
out of the mountains at the west end of Dawson 
Street, and on the city side a road turns south to 
follow its upward course. Sam puckered his lips, 
and again tugging down the hat-brim (which tried 
to twist up and make him look like an intending 
missionary, although he felt more like a possible 
hold-up man) he also turned aside — for no reason 
in the world. With a banking account a man has a 
reason for his actions; with none he is in the con- 
dition to follow emotions, whims, to go in the di- 
rection indicated by a pin lying on the road, or to 
decide which path to take at the cross-roads by the 
toss of his last coin. 

The road, cooled by the proximity of the creek, led 
up hill. Where the spray broke and smoked there 
were fragments of rainbow over the gulch in which 
the stream brawled to the lake. Shacks were perched 
by the roadside, some of log, caulked, very old for 
this city, dating from its “camp” days, if not from 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


45 


the ‘‘fort” period. Sam climbed upward, thinking 
over those “good old days,” and considering how 
excellent it must have been to go out and shoot one’s 
dinner, to make one’s tent from the hide that cov- 
ered it, to shape one’s knives from its picked bones. 
He was a very human young man, and such are the 
thoughts of youths with only seven dollars in the 
world. 

It was while turning over these vain fancies that 
he found himself, coming abruptly back to the pres- 
ent, higher in the world than he had imagined. He 
must have been wool-gathering for many steep paces. 
Stopping to survey his path he discovered that he 
was now at an altitude whence he could look down 
on the roofs of a great part of the city, and he 
spoke aloud, feeling aloof from men and their dol- 
lar-hunting energies. What he said was: 

“Huh!” 

It was called forth by observing that on the roofs 
of many of the stores the proprietors had taken the 
trouble to have their names and occupations painted 
in letters that must, he thought, be a yard tall. But 
for whom to read? He looked upward. There 
was nothing beyond but forest, with the road on 
which he walked twinkling away into it under the 
feathery lower branches. He might have turned 
there, where he paused to survey the landscape, had 
it not been for the printing on the roofs. There 
must surely, thought he, be some upper city hid 
by this belt of trees — otherwise, why advertise? It 


46 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


would be a poor little jest to make to the stars — to 
inform them of the existence of the Idaho Hard- 
ware Company. Or why should Signor Madrazo 
tell the heedless heavens what he told on a roof 
down there? It was told with black, waterproof 
paint — 

P. MADRAZO’S COFFEE MAKES YOU 
THINK OF HOME 
AND 

MOTHER 

Perhaps it was not intended for the heedless heavens, 
perhaps not even for the heedless squirrels. De- 
serted though this road was at that precise moment 
it must be a thoroughfare. It must really go some- 
where, be trod by people likely to buy hardware, 
and people likely to be touched by references to — his 
eyes, roving the roofs again, saw that P. Madrazo 
had a rival — their mothers: — 

SIMS’ COFFEE IS LIKE MOTHER 
USED TO MAKE 

He laughed to himself, wondered whether Sims 
or the Dago had been first in the field, and turning 
his back on the roofs he marched on into the woods, 
passed out of the blaze of sun into the shadow- 
patterned dust of old pine-needles and fir-cones. The 
trees stood majestic, and untroubled by the lumber- 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


47 


man. Higher up, he surmised, the lumberjacks had 
played havoc; but this belt stood as it must have 
stood for aeons. Maybe it was really within the city 
limits, city property — and the State government or- 
dered, or the State, or city, magnates had the right 
to say: ‘‘Woodman, spare these trees.” They were 
wonderful trees. They were trees that a financier 
would like to hear his cross-saw humming through 
and a poet could take off his hat to. 

Somebody had used one for an advertisement 
hoarding, nailed up on its venerable trunk a board 
that announced: 

JONES SELLS BACON 
NO DERN SOW-BELLY 

You should have seen Sam’s face under the down- 
tugged hat-brim. It was expressive of amusement 
and indignation. That vulgarity of Jones, however, 
convinced him that the road must be travelled on 
by people who ate bacon, as well as frisked over 
(they were all round him now) by the little striped 
chipmunks. So he held on. Maybe beyond the belt 
of timber was another town, an Upper Kootenay, 
and perhaps there was something there awaiting a 
seven-dollar man. 

On he trudged, as one trudging in a fantasy. Not 
a sound did he make. His shoes were powdered 
grey. He raised a faint dust as he walked, and it 
had an odour of Eternity. Strange that no one 


48 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


has invented an Attar of the Rocky Mountains. It 
would revolutionise the back-east drawing-rooms ; 
patchouli would go out before it like a candle in 
sunlight. He breathed deep of that exuberant scent 
and it simply did not matter to Sam that he pos- 
sessed only seven dollars. He had calculated that 
of that small sum he dare not spend a cent or else 
he would have to go on the dollar-fifty a day system, 
and have only four days of the unknown future pre- 
pared for instead of seven; were he to break his 
seven dollars at all, by so much as ten cents, he would 
have but four of these vague days ahead — four days 
at a dollar fifty amounting to six dollars. There was 
no doubt that the cut-rate of a week for seven dol- 
lars was some cut-rate, looking at it this way. Still 
— it was a skimpy, cheeseparing, frugal, penurious, 
abominable business, and he longed for a cheroot. 
With a bracing of his shoulders he exorcised again 
the spirit of melancholy that tried to rout his nat- 
ural good cheer, breathed deep of the mountain air, 
and was happier. 

Never mind. No matter. Round the corner 
might be a gold brick. The path twined to right, 
swerved to left, and then before him he saw a great 
red card on a tree, and on the red card was the black 
statement and command: 


SMALL-POX 
KEEP OUT 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


49 


And, at that, hopeful Sam raised his hat from his 
head, ran his palm over his dank looks, and ex- 
claimed: “Well, I’ll be * — !” It has to be 

admitted that he felt a sensation of creepiness al- 
though he carried it off to himself with that ejacu- 
lation. The callous proclamation was like a buffet 
in the face. He wondered how many young men 
who had come to this town to “make good,” who 
had partaken with good appetites of Sims’ and Ma- 
drazo’s coffee, and eaten Jones’ bacon that was no 
dern sow-belly, had been brought up this very road, 
seeing its tree-trunks through delirium and — — 

A jingle of advancing harness brought him from 
his musings, and he saw that the road did not end 
here, but that it wound again, that the entrance to 
the small-pox hospital was at the bend, a mere trail 
through the woods. He must not be encountered 
standing there as one frozen by a mere printed card. 
On he posted until he was close enough to the sign 
to observe the rusted head of the nail that impaled 
it to the tree. On the next sweep of road above, 
coming down towards him, was a mighty four-horse 
wagon laden with chunks of a sparkling rock. The 
horses came plunging on, and high overhead, foot 
on brake, the teamster waggled in his seat. 

Sam stepped aside to avoid the dust raised by 
wheels and hoofs, and having felt a touch of “white 
feather” over the unexpected announcement of that 
horrid plague, to atone to himself for that momen- 
tary touch of funk, he even left the wagon-road and 


50 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


pried a bit down the trail, beyond the grim card, 
for a glimpse of the house of isolation. But lie 
need not have flattered himself that he was doing 
anything singularly plucky; for a few yards onward 
he had evidence that the hospital guardians fully 
expected fools of his kind either not to be intimidated 
by the first sign, or to be intimidated and (in shame 
over the intimidation) to try to comfort themselves, 
to themselves, by ignoring it and adventuring closer. 
There was another card of the same hue, and with 
the same broad, black lettering, on a tree before him. 
It gave no command. It but made an announcement : 

PEST-HOUSE 

and left the rest to the sense of the possible reader. 

There, between the fir boles, Sam could see a 
house, a frame house in a clearing of the woods, 
its dismality not, he thought, entirely due to his imag- 
ination being at play on it — to his knowledge of what 
kind of house it was. No smoke rose from it. The 
windows were blank. Passing here at twilight one 
might expect an ashen face to be visible for a mo- 
ment, pressed to a pane of one of these windows, 
and then gone. 

Sam turned back, and saw that the driver of the 
great rocking wagon was twisting about on his seat, 
curiously surveying him; and when he showed upon 
the road again the man, with a movement as of sat- 
isfaction, settled down, rubbing his neck as though he 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


51 


had kinked it in his anxiety to know why the lone 
pilgrim afoot on the road should turn aside to “rub- 
ber-neck” at that inauspicious place. On Sam plod- 
ded, and felt as great a sense of pleasure now in the 
sun-splashed treeless hill ahead showing beyond a 
tunnel-like curve of branches, as he had felt on en- 
tering the cool shadows of the wood out of the hot 
sun. Coming on to the bare hillside what first caught 
his eye was the sloping and unfenced expanse to 
left. He looked across and along a slope that 
dropped down in rolls and precipices, wild terraces, 
and slides of rubble to Astley Creek. 

It was a sound that drew his gaze to right and 
up — a little chirping noise — and there, emerging 
from the wood through which he had come, but a 
stone’s throw further up hill, was a big black bucket, 
like the scoop buckets on dredgers, drifting through 
the void, coming out of the wood about fifty feet 
above ground. That was his first impression — of 
something fantastic — as his eye was drawn to it by 
the movement. Next moment, of course, he saw 
that the bucket was not performing any Mahomet’s 
coffin miracle. It was suspended from a wire, and 
the wire in turn was suspended from a pulley set into 
an iron arm which protruded from the top of a 
skeleton-like wooden tower. And on and on, up the 
hill, towers dotted the slope, each with an arm a-top 
to left, and an arm to right. He had never before 
seen an aerial tramway, and he paused to consider 
this one. It fascinated him. There went one wire 


52 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


ceaselessly moving upward, dotted with the black 
buckets; and, parallel, there came other buckets at 
the same regular intervals, moving down hill toward 
town. 

Those descending, he could see, were heavily- 
laden, full of chunks of ore; the ascending ones were 
empty. No — not all. As he watched, one came 
sailing out of the wood with a couple of boxes in 
it, and he could see, gazing up with puckered eyes 
(for the sky was all a-shimmer with heat and sun), 
that they were cases containing condensed milk tins. 
Then out of the belt of woods came another laden 
bucket — this one containing egg-boxes. Evidently 
food was going up to sustain those who, away yon- 
der on the summit, blasted the rich galena from the 
mountain’s spine. 

He was about to turn aside from the road to in- 
spect more closely the stratagem, or invention, by 
which the buckets were affixed to the wire rope so 
as to allow of them comfortably passing the pulleys 
that upheld the rope at the towers, when he noticed 
that the road ahead would, swerving upward fur- 
ther on, lead him directly under the tramway, and 
close to one of the towers. So on he trudged, scores 
of chipmunks darting to and fro, and chirping to him, 
up and down, on either hand — and the buckets swing- 
ing along in air with occasional little creakings as 
they passed the upholding arms. 

His curiosity satisfied regarding the simple device, 
he marched on, the tramway now close, now distant, 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


53 


as the road wound. At last he crested a knoll and 
saw ahead of him a cluster of new frame houses that 
seemed deserted save for a young man who had di- 
vested himself of coat and waistcoat for coolness, and 
sat upon the step of one of the houses trying to 
tempt toward him, with fragments of bread, a very 
dainty specimen of chipmunk that, sitting on 
haunches, fore-paws dangling, fixed the would-be 
tamer with a half-friendly, half-suspicious eye. The 
young man looked up as Sam approached, nodded 
affably, informed him that the day was warm; to 
which Sam agreed and slackened pace, wondering 
who should inaugurate conversation. 

“He took a piece of punk from my hand yes- 
terday,” said the young man, glancing toward the 
chipmunk. “There’s a chap up at the Lanyon mine 
has got one so tame that it comes every day to be 
fed. He can lift it up by its tail and it will eat out 
of his hand like that.” 

As he said “Lanyon mine” he nodded not in the 
direction of the peak immediately above, but toward 
a more distant range that limited the view south- 
ward. 

“Is there a mine up there, then?” asked Sam. 

“Why, yes — this is only the store and bunk-house 
of the Fraser mines. You’re really there; the shaft 
is just above you. The Lanyon is on that crest, 
where the buckets go to. They belong to the Lan- 
yon; we team all our ore down. Didn’t you meet a 
load?” 


54 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Yes,” said Sam, and his eyes followed the line 
of tram-towers that dropped from sight into a gorge 
a little way ahead. The hill beyond was timbered, 
but he could distinguish the cleared lane through the 
woods over there — obviously the distant path of the 
tramway. It was a grim sort of device, this, of 
trestle towers and crawling wires, and dangling 
buckets, up and down the grand mountain-slopes. 

“Yap, we haul by wagon,” continued the young 
man in the white shirt, bringing Sam back from his 
survey of these scrabblings and puny defacings of 
ant-like man. “All the machinery we need is just 
that.” That y to which he nodded, was a line of nar- 
row-gauge railway up the steep incline to right. Be- 
tween the rails lay a wire rope. “Are you looking 
for a job?” he added. 

“Yes.” 

“Miner?” 

“No.” 

“I’m the cashier, book-keeper, pay-clerk, store- 
keeper for the Fraser mine. The only other jobs 
you can ever get here, apart from straight mining, 
are cook and hash-slinger; and we’re full up 1 in 
these lines.” 

“Do you know if there is anything in the way of 
work to be had at the Lanyon mine?” asked Sam. 

“Don’t think so. A couple of men went up yes- 
terday, and on the way back they told me there was 
nothing doing there either. I think you can take it 
as useless. How are you on horses?” 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


55 


“I can handle them a bit,” acknowledged Sam. 

“I believe they’re going to put on another wagon,” 
said the cashier. “You see they haul from here. 
We don’t have the tramway at all. The contractor 
for the hauling might be up to-day. Marsden is his 
name — you should meet him when you’re going down 
again, but if you don’t, go into the office when 
you get back to town.” 

“Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome, and good luck.” 

Sam turned again to the road and was soon set- 
tled into a swinging pace down hill. Life is not 
all climbing mountains. He swung along with easy 
strides, the chipmunks commenting on him one to 
another, chirping and frisking, adventuring near to 
him, waiting in the middle of the road until he was 
almost on them, then dancing off with eyes twinkling 
in merriment. And at every stride the hill-crests 
alongside went bob, bob, bobbing down. Looking 
back, after a space of travel, he found that he had 
paused just in time to see the last of the roofs of 
the Fraser mine houses. Another step and they had 
disappeared, and he was alone on the great fanning 
slopes. To left the towers stood up at their meas- 
ured intervals. Hobgoblin things, it struck him, they 
would look after dark. Always the buckets, like 
beads on a string, drifted up on the hither wire and 
down on the farther one. Sam thought how much 
more easy it would be to ride up the hills in a bucket 
— but considered that anyone so travelling would 


56 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


have to be careful at each trestle to crouch low, so as 
not to be decapitated by the projecting arm. 

He walked with head sideways, looking at the 
towers, pondering the possibility of such a journey, 
loose stones on the road flying from his feet. Yes; 
it could be done. One could sit in the bucket, legs 
dangling over, and duck at each arm; but one would 
have to duck with caution, for fear of tilting the 
bucket and dropping out. Looking ahead he found 
that, as he had walked along weighing the pros and 
cons of aerial travel, something that moved had come 
out of the strip of woods below. 

He peered at it, and could make nothing human 
of it. It looked like a new creature — or some pre- 
historic one uncannily surviving. He peered again 
under the shadow of his hat-brim, and was puzzled. 
It looked like a pterodactyl about to soar; then sud- 
denly he untangled it — saw that what came up 
toward him was a man leading a horse. Sam sur- 
mised that here was Marsden, of whom he had heard 
above. Not profitless, after all, might be his trudge. 

Yes, this must be Marsden — this heavy man, yet 
agile for all his heaviness, who advanced upon him. 
It was a grim jaw that he presently took note of; 
those were calculating brows under the wide-awake 
hat. Their gaze met, and Sam perceived a cold glint 
in the eyes of the other man. Maybe what Marsden 
saw on Sam’s face was uncertainty, for to be sure 
Sam was trying to decide whether to “flag him,” in 
the cook’s phrase, or not; whether to say: “Excuse 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


57 


me, are you Mr. Marsden?” or to let him go by. 

Marsden, if this was Marsden, did not appeal to 
Sam. It was not that Sam had ever considered him- 
self a student of physiognomy. It was not that this 
big man intimidated him. Sam was not easily in- 
timidated; he was, indeed, of a tendency to respond 
to intimidation with something of grimness in him- 
self. He could not, any more than another, see 
Marsden’s aura, but — he simply was not appealed to. 
His inclination was to pass on, to offer even saluta- 
tion only if this man saluted him in passing. 

It has already been remarked that a man near 
the end of his tether is more apt to follow impulse 
than to carry out a ponderous scheme, more apt to 
toss a coin for a decision then than when he has a 
banking account. When almost abreast of the man 
with the cold, grey eyes Sam delivered a direct glance 
on him. 

Presumably on this lonely hill-side, so far from 
town, men meeting on the road would exchange some 
kind of greeting as they passed. But Haig had no 
desire to have his salute ignored. One with his 
pocket full of money can shrug his shoulders over lack 
of civility upon the road; but with only seven dol- 
lars to his name, if a passer-by ignores his greeting, 
he is apt (the average man — or the man like Sam) 
to brood upon the fact that he has only seven dol- 
lars. And this man’s face was not effusive by a 
long way. 

Suddenly he concentrated his gaze on Sam. Those 


58 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


eyes puckered even more than the afternoon sun- 
light warranted. He came to a halt, the horse stop- 
ping short behind him, its broad forehead within 
an inch of his back. 

“Say,” he said, “do you want to make a dollar?” 

Sam had to think about that. He thought rap- 
idly, meeting the gaze of his interlocutor, who had 
not prefaced the proposal with so much as a “good 
afternoon.” 

“I wouldn’t object to making a thousand dollars,” 
he admitted, and smiled slightly upon the forward- 
thrust face before him. 

The steely eyes were hidden briefly by a drooping 
of the lids, and then — 

“It’s like this,” said the man with the led horse, 
“my horse has gone lame. I can’t ride him up to 
the Fraser, and I’ve got to go up there now. It seems 
cruel to take him all that way if there’s a chance 
of getting him down. If you’re going into town — 
and I guess you are,” he interjected with a sudden 
hard intonation, “you might ” 

It stuck in Sam’s mind that the man had fired off 
a dollar offer at him. Had he had fifty dollars in 
his pocket he might have taken the lines in one hand 
and cheerily held out the other with: “Put your 
dollar there and tell me where to leave the horse.” 
But, with a knowledge of the mere seven dollars, he 
resented being sized up for a man willing to make 
an off-hand dollar on a vacant hill-side. Here was 
a rough set-back to the pleasure he had felt, only 


ENTER JACK MARSDEN 


59 


that morning, on being taken for an affluent person 
by the real-estate tout. 

“Never mind the dollar,” he said, stretching out 
his hand to the reins. “If the horse is lame it’s too 
long a climb to the Fraser, and I don’t know but 
what coming down would be worse. I’ll lead him 
for you,” — his voice changed as the man, instead of 
showing understanding and gratitude, showed but a 
grimmer aspect — “seeing you’re in too great a hurry 
to get up the mountain to turn back with him and 
ride up on another horse.” 

The man’s head went slightly on one side, and 
with something nigh insolence, or so it seemed to 
Sam, he delivered a final, long, calculating examina- 
tion. Then — 

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “He might find 
his own way down if I tied the lines loose to the 
horn, and turned him about — but on the other hand 
he might grouch over his hurt pastern and mope 
around on the way. Thank you. You might just 
hand him over to one of the men at Marsden’s sta- 
bles. You know where they are, I suppose?” 

“No. Where are they?” enquired Sam, thrusting 
his fingers against the horse’s neck to indicate to him 
that he was to turn. 

It seemed that there was a slight curl on the man’s 
lips as he replied: “Astley Street.” And then: 
“Do you know Astley Street?” he asked in a tone 
that irritated Sam — who was glad he hadn’t accepted 
that dollar. 


60 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“I’ll find it,” he said. “Come along — get up, 
boy,” and he turned away, aware that the man to 
whom (or to whose horse) he did this favour stood 
stock still looking after him until he was well under 
way. 

Anyhow he had a companion now, and a good 
companion too — a friendly companion who seemed to 
understand that he was being led home and had met 
a good Samaritan. Sam walked back easily, found 
Astley Street, could not fail to see the big name- 
board : 


J. MARSDEN 

CONTRACTOR LIVERY-STABLES 

led the horse in, and was greeted with : 

“What’s the matter? Something happened to 
Marsden?” 

“No, just the horse,” said Sam. “Mr. Marsden 
— if it was Mr. Marsden I met on the hill — asked 
me to do him the favour of bringing the beast home. 
He’s gone lame. Good-day.” 

“Good-day,” replied the livery-man, gazing after 
the precipitate Sam. 


CHAPTER Ftf 


REGARDING TIMPKIN’S GOAT 

T IMPKIN, Mrs. Timpkin, and a Chinaman 
called Sing were fluttering round the dozen 
tables in the dining-room attending to their 
guests, these guests that were inevitably of three 
kinds; the mean, making good money but desiring 
to save as much as possible because of stinginess; or 
those who had someone to support elsewhere, for 
whose sake they selected a dollar-and-a-half a day 
house (cut-rate seven dollars a week) instead of a 
two or three dollar a day house; or the misfits in 
the world of Kootenay city, immigrants from a dif- 
ferent system, who found that the boom wages, and 
boom opportunities, did not come their way. 

His horse-delivery over, Sam came home and 
washed the horse-smell from his hands, then de- 
scended to the supper-room. He tapped the wor- 
ried atmosphere. Fervently did he hope that he 
might soon encounter some dollars, so as to be able 
to say to Timpkin: “Now let us call a halt to cut 
rate and enter into the one-and-a-half a day system 
— yea, with extras, if you please, to two dollars.” 
He saw something pathetic in the fluttering to and 
fro of Mrs. Timpkin. Timpkin, with left arm 
crooked, and a row of saucers perched thereon from 
61 


62 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


biceps to wrist, each with its cup featly balanced, 
slithered from kitchen door to dining tables like a 
desperate clown. Waiters pride themselves on ca- 
pacity to do these things, but Timpkin did not look 
like a waiter glorying in his adroitness and being 
paid, monthly, the union of waiters’ wages. He 
looked what he was — a slightly harassed proprietor 
of a boarding-house that offered cut-rates in a boom 
town where, if boom wages were to be earned, boom 
prices were also asked for merchandise, food, and 
raiment. With crooked arm he glided around, stoop- 
ing to each client in turn and demanding, in tones 
like that of “Your money or your life !” — “What do 
you drink?” Now and then, for variety’s sake (be- 
cause habits appalled him, and he kicked against rou- 
tine), he would say: “What’s yours?” Being told 
the drink desired he curved a trifle more that al- 
ready curved arm with the cups resting along it, and 
bending his head he smelt rapidly down the steam- 
ing line. Someone asked for coffee — so sniff, sniff, 
sniff he went along his arm-load. Coffee was the 
last in the row; there was one final cup of coffee after 
five of tea. Evidently the cook in the kitchen kept 
pouring out tea and coffee without method, unless, 
indeed, he believed that the demand for tea was 
greater than for coffee. Timpkin, however, felt an- 
noyance. If somebody else asked for coffee now 
he would have to go balancing back for it. 

But he was not bereft of humour if lacking in 
a sense of refinement regarding a waiter’s manners, 


REGARDING TIMPKIN’S GOAT 


63 


and as he put down the cup of the desired odour 
he caught Sam’s eye. Sam was amused, and showed 
it, and Timpkin responded to the twinkle of that 
gay and poverty-stricken guest with a pucker and 
elongation of his lips that seemed to imply: “Yes, 
I’m a bit comic, I expect' — desperately comic!” Sam 
found himself wondering how the boarding-house 
paid. Perhaps symbol of how this establishment 
paid was to be found in the toothpicks in the centre 
of each table — toothpicks of wood, not of quill as 
in the two-dollar houses, to say naught of quill neat- 
ly tucked into little tissue paper envelopes as in the 
three-dollar houses. And even that arithmetical 
comparison might not work out as expected, for not 
every two-dollar and three-dollar guest wields a 
toothpick, though every dollar-and-a-half a day one 
does so. Sami had arrived a trifle late, and was 
leisurely finishing his meal, last of the guests pres- 
ent, when Mr. and Mrs. Timpkin sat down, the 
Chinaman coming to attend to their wants. 

“Well, there’s that rush over,” said Timpkin, evi- 
dently to Sam, for the remark was repeated a sec- 
ond time. 

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Haig. “Yes — 
quite a rush.” 

“There are some terrors all right,” continued 
Timpkin. “Did you spot that blue-nosed swine — — ” 

“Ssshh!” admonished his wife, but laughing 
though remonstrative. 

“That’s all right,” growled Timpkin in appeasing 


64 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


accents. “I’m on to him. If there’s a dish of any- 
thing that’s for the table in general, instead of just 
for one man, I notice he always takes more than 
his share and then clamps the dish opposite someone 
else, and when I take it up to refill it he looks at 
the man he clamped it in front of as if he was 
thinking: ‘Well, you are a m,ean fellow!’ That’s 
what gets my goat!” 

Mrs. Timpkin buttered her biscuit and laughed 
again. 

“I’m on to him — I’m on to them,” assered Timp- 
kin. “You should see them at breakfast, that breed. 
I used to put the milk for the tea and coffee on the 
tables when I was setting, but I stopped that, for 
they would collar the jug with the milk that was 
supposed to be for the tea and coffee, as well as 
emptying the big one, and smother their porridge 
with milk. They get sufficient for their porridge 
without that. I tell you what these fellows are ” 

“Ssshh !” said Mrs. Timpkins. 

“All right, all right,” he murmured soothingly. 
“No more milk on the table now at dinner and 
supper. They get the milk put in their tea and 
coffee for them now, at dinner-time and supper-time, 
instead of having it in a jug. If it’s in a jug on 
the table they pour it into their soup. Some of 
them — some of them, by heck ” 

“Ssshh!” 

“Yes, some of them,” he went on, paying no heed 
to his wife’s warning, “had the gall to call my play 


REGARDING TIMPKIN’S GOAT 


65 


and sing out: ‘Some milk, please, Mr. Timpkins!’ 
Can’t even get my name ! It’s Timpkin — not Timp- 
kins. There ain’t two of me! I tell you what it 
is,” he ended, “it’s hard on the decent sorts among 
them. It’s liable to make a man give up being de- 
cent and say : ‘What’s the good of being decent and 
an honourable man and remembering there’s other 
folks in the world when it only ends in another 
fellow eating all the spuds and clamping an empty 
dish before me?’ No, siree! That’s what gets my 
goat.” 

“You’ll make this new gentleman scared to eat 
anything, Herbert Lincoln,” Mrs. Timpkin inter- 
posed. 

“Not at all,” said Sam, graciously reassuring. 

“Not at all!” echoed Timpkin. “He’s got the 
savvy.” 

“He’ll think you call down your guests to each 
other.” 

“Not at all,” said Sam. 

“Not at all!” exploded Timpkin. “I can gauge 
a man when I see him. Which reminds me” — and 
he addressed his wife — “that fellow in room six is 
going to pull out to-night without paying his bill.” 

“What ! Did he tell you ? Did he ask you ” 

“Tell me! Ask me if he might go and send. the 
cash by mail? You bet you! No! But he looked 
at me as he went out just now after he took his tooth- 
pick. I know that look. I was a fool to let him 
run his face for a fortnight. Good-bye Fourteen 


66 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


Dollars,” he said with grim gaiety, and waved his 
hand, and kissed his finger-tips to the door. 

“I hope you’re mistaken,” said Mrs. Timpkin. 

“I’m not mistaken! Yes, sir,” he looked at his 
pipe which he now drew forth and filled, “I tell you 
what it is, this running a ” 

“Ssshh !” Oh do be careful, Lincoln.” 

“Well, this running a plain boarding-house,” he 
substituted, “is ” 

“Ssshh!’” 

Timpkin laughed and shook his head. 

“That’s it,” he said. “It’s a careful job all right, 
and it don’t suit us. We’re naturally the kind of 
folk, Mrs. Timpkin and I, to let her whiz. And here 
we have to scrimp. That’s what gets my goat! 
Give me another cup of coffee, Sing — if it was coffee 
I had.” 

Timpkin leaned back to sip his second cup at ease, 
and Sam, feeling that he intruded, rose, made his 
bow, and left them to enjoy their after-supper ease 
alone. The other boarders had all departed by the 
time he appeared on the verandah — some to listen 
to the Salvation Army turns, others to put nickels 
in the slots of automatic machines that might return 
the nickel in a cup at the side, or might not. There 
had formerly, when Kootenay was a little younger, 
been another kind of automatic machine, one that 
might return the five cent piece put in and some others 
as well, but the mayor of the moment had “closed” 
Kootenay — which means that he had decreed that it 


REGARDING TIMPKIN’S GOAT 


67 


was not a gambling town ; but he was not an extremist, 
so he allowed the machines to remain that merely 
sported with the nickel put in, barring only those of 
wider speculation. 

Perhaps part of Sam’s freedom from worry that 
evening, although he was still poor, was due to the 
presence in town of many young men of the roving 
breed, the wanderers who fly from “Excitement” 
to “Excitement” — for thus they use the word: “I 
hear there’s an Excitement in the Klondyke” — or it 
may be “at Nome” or “at Reno” or “at a place they 
call Wild Horse Creek,” or “I see there’s an Excite- 
ment in West Australia. I wonder if a man could 
get there before it fades.” They were becoming a 
little restless in Kootenay, the boom on the ebb ; but 
still they were there. 

Perhaps Sam tapped the telepathic waves of gaiety 
they set in motion. Or it may have been the mountain 
air that kept him cheerful, despite the fact that this 
was Franklin’s “to-morrow” and that he had not yet 
tripped over a gold brick. On the verandah of 
Timpkin’s he sat down to look at the last of the sun- 
set, and the rise of the moon over Mount Drew be- 
hind the town, to listen to the little winds running 
in the slender birch-trees the town planners had left 
standing here and there, and to consider hopefully 
that there was still a hopeful “day after.” 

Ever and again the face of Marsden came up be- 
fore him. Should he have asked him) for a job? But 
why question now? If he met Marsden again to- 


68 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


morrow, as he had met him to-day, the meeting would 
befall just in the same way. He would lead the horse 
home for charity toward horses; Marsden could keep 
his paltry dollar, and Sam would not ask him for 
employment, or for advice as to where employment 
could be obtained. So why worry? He tilted his 
chair and drew forth his pipe, and his pouch, un- 
touched all day, for it contained but one fill. To 
see him prime the bowl you might have thought 
there was something sacerdotal in the use of pipe 
and tobacco. He had just blown the first slow cloud 
when Timpkin came strolling into the twilight and 
said: “Ha!” 

“A-ha !” said Sam. 

At that Timpkin sat down, corn-cob in hand, and 
for a little space nothing was said. Each attended 
to the drifting forth of the tobacco incense. Anon 
Timpkin spoke, taking pipe from mouth, and leant 
head against his chair-back. 

“It’s a peculiar world,” said Timpkin. “I mean 
the people. Also I mean the rules of the game. 
Brains or muscle, muscle or brains? Which is it to 
be?” he enquired of the moon that now swam clear 
of Mount Drew and, after having briefly silhouetted 
the fringes of topmiost trees, lit the tips of the tallest 
all down the slope — picked them out and turned 
them to pale green spires amid the general blue- 
black. “Did you ever go and look at the fellows 
working in the smelter?” 

“No.” 


REGARDING TIMPKIN’S GOAT 


69 


“Well, you should. There are a lot of Swedes 
there, all same draught-horses. There ain’t one 
under six foot, and there’s a little bit of a sawed-off 
cuss of an Englishman bossing them. They have 
to be told to do everything. Things it would take 
six of their boss to lift, one of them lifts as casual 
as he puts his pipe in his mouth. The boss says to 
two of them: ‘Lift that, and take it over there.’ 
But he tells me that if he forgot to add ‘And set it 
down there!’ they’d go and stand with their load 
where he pointed until he sees them and shouts ‘Set 
it down!’ You might think, to excuse them, it is a 
kind of faithfulness and sense of discipline gone 
wrong; but it ain’t. It’s just them lacking brains. 
And look at the mayor of this town ! When he went 
around electioneering and haranguing a bunch of 
lumberjacks, he looked like a match alongside fir- 
trees. They’re getting three-and-a-half dollars a 
day, and he’s building houses and standing people 
off for payment of materials. How’s that?” 

“Very good,” replied Sam, laughing. 

“It cuts both ways, though,” said Timpkin. 
“Brains are going cheap in this town now, because 
too much of them has come in. The boom has 
brought crowds, and a lot of the arrivals ain’t ac- 
customed to swinging a hammer underground, or an 
axe above-ground, for a living. They try for jobs in 
offices and stores, and the competition has brought 
down wages. You see there’s no union of the clerk 
types. The miners may pile in too thick, but they 


70 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


have a strong union. The wages won’t come down. 
The surplus miners just get out; that’s all. The sur- 
plus clerks and accountants and so forth say: ‘No, 
siree, I won’t work for such wages as you offer!’ 
and then they go out in the street feeling big, and 
get a whiff of lamb fricassee out of some restaurant 
door, and back they go, feeling up against it and 
small, and say: ‘On second thoughts, if that job 
is still open . . 

All of this had a personal application for Sam. 
But as Timpkin was thus speaking some of the board- 
ers began to drop in, and after casual chatter with 
them on their bedward way (labourers most of these, 
going early to rest, ready for sound sleep), Timp- 
kin departed to the little private sitting-room to talk 
to his wife. Sam stretched, rose, and climbed the 
stairs to his room. 

The lamp was out, the yellow blind was drawn 
down on its roller three-quarters of the length of 
the window, and the window raised at the bottom. 
He struck a match, found the lamp, touched the 
chimney gingerly to discover if it was sufficiently 
cooled, lest his room-mate had had it alight, found it 
not too hot to the touch, and lit up, so as to have 
illumination to undress. The light no sooner 
pranked the room than moths and flying beetles 
flocked in at the window and richocheted from wall 
to wall, while flies that had been asleep on the ceil- 
ing wakened to dance to and fro up there, droning 
peevishly. At cut-rates mosquito-netting can’t be 


REGARDING TIMPKIN’S GOAT 


71 


expected. One moth fell into the lamp and gave 
a scream, finding voice at the moment of its 
fiery death, as mutes do, sometimes, under stress of 
great excitement or shock. His room-mate lay there 
deeply breathing, now and again shaking his head as 
a fly walked on nose or forehead. He was a stolid- 
faced man ; almost pathetic he looked to Sam, asleep 
there. Flies, mosquitoes, flying beetles, and moths 
are not ravening monsters, to be sure, but there is 
something to be said for mosquito-netting on win- 
dows in mid-summer. Sam was glad to extinguish 
the light, thus settling at least the flies, and suggest- 
ing to the moths to flutter off out of the window. But 
the mosquitoes gathered round, their hum mounting 
up in exultation ever and again when they drew 
blood. 

It was a troubled sleep that came to him. The 
people of the city moved in his dreams. Marsden 
was the leading man of that higgledy-piggledy, fan- 
tastic play. He eclipsed the stableman, and the 
cashier of the Lanyon mine. In that confused dream 
Sam was mixed up in some trouble over a lame horse, 
hired from Marsden by none other than the girl who 
had smitten him for an hour or two, seen at the cross- 
ing of Dawson and Hoskins on his arrival — but who 
had faded from his mind during the preoccupation of 
trying to discover how to get along in a three-dollar- 
a-day town with but three bills in the world, one of 
three dollars and two of two. 


CHAPTER V 


THE DAY AFTER 

I T was now “the day after,” according to Frank- 
lin’s estimate of his affairs, and it behoved Sam, 
breakfast over, to bestir himself. As he went 
forth into the town men in blue dungarees were 
everywhere. They congregated beside the tool-boxes 
in the half-made avenues and streets; they made ir- 
regular queues in front of livery stables, they clus- 
tered before buildings in course of erection. The 
morning was clear, fresh. If no one had been near, 
Haig might have whooped for joy in the genial and 
merry tang of it — despite his seven dollars state. 

Suddenly amid the male crowds he saw (thus un- 
expectedly early) a fair damsel swinging past, and 
his heart beat. Think not it leapt to every whirl 
of lace and cambric. This was She of the crossing, 
and along Dawson Street westward she now tripped 
as though her feet were gossamer. Sam followed. 
It was doubtless a physical allure, for he had not 
heard her speak; he knew naught of her outlook, 
her views. 

He followed, just for the joy in her pliant back, 
the rhythm of her going; and at the moment that 
he felt ashamed of himself for thus sleuthing after 
her she deflected into a grocery store. Looking 
72 


THE DAY AFTER 


73 


neither to right nor left, Sam walked on. Never 
mind! She had set his direction for the day. A 
man without a banking account, it has been remarked, 
will let a pin on the road decide the direction of 
his day’s journey. This was a more thrilling in- 
dication than a pin’s. Ahead of him, at end of 
Dawson Street, he had a glimpse of the edge of the 
smelter dump, a desolate, unsightly heap of rubble 
against the hills that there closed the view. It oc- 
curred to him to go on to the smelter and inquire 
if there was any need of labour there. There were 
certainly signs of labour in that hideous and unat- 
tractive dump and, as he drew nearer, in the black, 
barn-like buildings, the furnace towers, the reeking 
chimneys. 

One way to the smelter turned off abruptly, close 
to the depot, and as he came there he saw three men 
on the freight-shed platform struggling with a load 
that clearly called for four men; and one of the 
three wrestlers, by his attire, was the boss — who 
shouldn’t have been wrestling at all, only directing 
■ — organising. Impulse came to Sam — and he com- 
plied. 

“Don’t you want another hand?” he hailed. 

The boss turned and eyed him. 

“Jump right up!” said he. “Jump right up, for 
any sake, and lay hold here. Peel off your Sunday 
coat and waistcoat. Look — there’s an old pair of 
dungaree overalls you can have for the time being.” 

“What are the wages?” asked Sam. 


74 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Wages!” roared die boss, as if disgusted by such 
a mercenary question at such a pressed moment, and 
the two assistants laughed. “Forty-five a month — 
overtime fifteen cents an hour — fifty cents a month 
deducted for doctors.” 

Sam hauled on the tattered overalls that the boss 
had pointed out, and “laid hold.” 

To Timpkin that night he said: “By the way, 
regarding the cut-rate of seven dollars a week — I 
would prefer to pay the normal dollar-and-a-half a 
day.” 

Timpkin gazed at him, head bent. 

“But I saw you at the freight-shed to-day,” said 
he. “I know where you are working. The wages 
there are only forty-five. That means you’ll spend 
all your earnings on board and bed.” 

“There’s overtime also,” Sam pointed’ out. “Fif- 
teen cents an hour.” 

“Um!” said Timpkin. 

“And I have my seven dollars now for pocket- 
money for the month.” 

“Um !” said Timpkin. 

“And it is only a. stepping-stone; If I arrange to 
pay a month’s wages for a month’s board, look at 
the incentive to have a new job next month, with 
double the wages.” 

Timpkin still gazed at him, then gave' voice. 

“I have a partiality for men who are slightly 
crazy,” said he, “Frankly, I’m taking no more cut- 
rate boarders. Prices are too high for grub, and 


THE DAY AFTER 


75 


too many of them bolt without paying. I hadn’t 
reckoned on them being so numerous — the fellows 
who run their face and then skip ; I had allowed for 
them, but not enough. I won’t fire out any of my 
cut-raters, but when they go — no more.” 

“Good,” said Sam. “Then put me down for the 
straight dollar-and-a-half a day.” 

Timpkin shook his head. 

“No,” he said, “no. I’m a little bit crazy myself. 
Let us say a dollar twenty-five.” 

“Very well.” 

Timpkin wheeled, departed, and presently ap- 
peared again in the doorway beckoning to Sam, who, 
wondering what was afoot, approached. 

“You have room five to-night,” said the landlord. 
“I’ve moved your grip in. It’s a single bed room.” 

“Oh, but — ” began Sam, when suddenly, behind 
Timpkin, appeared Mrs. Timpkin. 

“Say, young man,” said she, “I think you’re a 
white person. Lincoln has told me what you said. 
I wish there were more like you.” 

Looking at her radiant face, her jack-easy (or 
should it be jane-easy?) face, Sam saw that her eyes 
were full of tears. He realised that he was not the 
only one in the boom town who found how to live 
a problem. Sufficient atonement (or reward) for 
his “craziness” was her expression of belief in 
him. 

“There is to-morrow — and the day after,” he re- 
called, as he went to bed that night, and he mused: 


76 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“This was the day after, and I have at least ob- 
tained some kind of job.” 

As for that work at the freight-shed, he enjoyed 
it. The fact that it was unskilled labour brought 
to it a quaint assortment of men. They were not of 
one type but of many. Sam, more interested in 
people than in dollars, found these, his trucking and 
weight-lifting fellows, fascinating. There was a little 
fellow of the navvy order, who said “dis here” and 
“dat dere”; there was an Englishman who hummed 
snatches of Beethoven, and talked with an appalling 
accent — founded on bad Charterhouse — a kind of 
travesty of speech; but it had come to be second- 
nature to him, wherefore one listened to what he 
said and tried to keep placid toward the manner; 
there was a hooligan youth from some back-block 
of Chicago who, when that Englishman spoke to 
him, was wont to say: “Whistle it, and I’ll tell you 
what you’re asking.” There was an Englishman 
of the quiet type (he, too, handicapped in this town 
by being a member of no union), whose eyes twin- 
kled over such comments, but who appeared to be at 
ease equally with the accentuated Englishman and 
the swamp-tenement Chicago kid. 

These stayed longest. Others came and worked 
a day or two, and departed, merely working for 
money to procure meals until a better billet offered. 
It was the simultaneous failure to appear of no 
less than four of such casuals that had made Webley 
(the boss) so eagerly respond to Sam’s inquiry, and 


THE DAY AFTER 


77 


invite him to “jump in.” The boss did not blame 
them for their non-appearance. In lulls in the work 
he was wont to raise his eyes to heaven, and, taking 
off his hat as if to show how deep, to the point of 
sacred, were his feelings, he would condemn to the 
uttermost part of Hades first the load of goods with 
which his men had been wrestling, and lastly, after a 
wondrous journey, the president of the railroad sys- 
tem and all the shareholders. Then, refreshed, he 
would put his hat on again, and his staff would once 
more draw breath. 

It was an education to see what imports came to 
that town. There were carloads of stoves — “and 

for any sake, you fellows, easy on these * — 

stoves. They’re brittle as glass. If you drop 

one of the ring tops the — thing will 

crack, and there’s a B.O.” (bad order) “to write 
down, and we must take the blame. We can’t blame 
the last packers and the yard switchmen for every- 
thing.” There were flat-cars with machines for the 
mines. “This has got to be jiu-jutsued, you fellows. 

We can’t yo-heave-ho this centrifugal 

pump off the car. See, bring that scantling, you. 

Bring a pinch-bar, you, and slip it in here. Oh 

! What kind of a pinch-bar is 

that? For any sake, isn’t there a pinch-bar with a 
heel to it? Oh!” apostrophising heaven, “what a 
blank of a railway company is this blank, blank rail- 
way company. A pinch-bar without a heel ! More 
jiu-jutsu ! More ji-u-jutsu-you !” 


78 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


There was that carload of oil cans, on a day of 
sweltering heat at the freight-shed. O memorable 
oil-cans! The procession of truckers passed down 
the platform- — Shorty in the lead, then the Eng- 
lishman whose talk was interesting enough, but 
whose grimaces, with mouth hanging open between 
the words, and whose sighing utterances were so 
painful; then the tolerable Englishman, one of the 
name of London, which made some suspect it was 
not his name, and that he had a past; then came 
the tenement kid, saying: “O gee, get a move 
on, you plugs !” although there was 4 ‘a lady passing,” 
as Shorty reminded him in hoarse whisper, and last 
of all there was Sam. 

He had remarked her long before the procession 
came level. It was the lady of the crossing. She 
paid no heed to the men; grjmy truckers were out- 
side her knowledge. There was thus the more op- 
portunity for Sam to feast his eyes upon her with- 
out fear of meeting hers and being esteemed rude. 
So he feasted- — with but a tearing of his glance the 
while he breathed vehemently to the profane Chicago 
youth in front: “Shut up!” For the Chicago kid, 
when he spoke, might say anything. 

Sam saw her now, in full face, whom he had first 
seen in profile, and again in rear. She strolled 
slowly along the platform while the trucks rattled 
toward her. She was young. She was tall. She 
was slender. She carried her inches as though she 
were responsible for them. A tall man is apt to 


THE DAY AFTER 


79 


slouch; there is often a suggestion in his stoop that 
he does not wish to taunt his shorter fellows; a 
tall woman generally takes the inches given her as 
though alone had she made them, and adds high 
heels to them if a taller comes into the neighbour- 
hood. She makes the most of her inches; she for- 
gets them not. She drapes herself to accentuate 
them. 

This one carried hers well. She made him think 
of poplars and lilies, of the stately bay-trees that 
artists, millionaires, and cafe proprietors alike have 
often fondness for — or perhaps it is the artist, who 
designs the millionaire’s porch and the cafe front, 
who advises the finish of the bays for them. He 
was in the condition for thinking of flowers and 
plants in connection with her, it would seem. Her 
cheeks were roses, her lips cherry-stained. Herrick 
could have helped him at that moment. And her 
hair was a new hue of ebony, a blue-tinted ebony 
under the shadow of her hat. 

I am afraid Marcus Stone might have wished to 
paint her had there been a sundial near by; but 
she ravished Sam here, with no sundial within hun- 
dreds of miles for all he knew, but with a daring 
background of the glaring red and yellow buildings 
of the passenger depot. He feasted his eyes upon 
her as directly as he would on a woman in a play 
behind the footlights, for the procession of truckers 
was so very evidently nothing to her. They were 
to her, he surmised, so many shadowy figures, up- 


80 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


holding a train of noisy, joggling oil-cans beside 
her. 

Then abruptly her eyes swept to him, met his — 
and held them. The young man’s heart was stabbed 
through. He went on in a daze, a haze. The coal- 
oil-cans were unladen with much clatter; the queue 
turned right about — but “the lady” had gone. It 
was the last load of the day. 

“All right, boys,” said Webley, changing from 
boss to fellow human being in a way he had. “Six 
o’clock. Run the trucks in and close the doors.” 


CHAPTER VI 


BURNING HIS BOATS 

I N those days the caste-less young men were in 
the majority in Kootenay and a freight-shed 
trucker might (for all one knew to the con- 
trary) be the Grand Duke of Somewhere in the dis- 
guise of dungarees. That was just the place to find 
him, seeing that trucking is not skilled labour. And 
thus it was, with the spirit of bonhomie and some- 
thing in the nature of democracy still vital in the 
land, that Grosset, the star-boarder at Timpkin’s — 
Grosset, manager of the Kootenay Clothing Com- 
pany — was willing to sit down and chat to Sam. 
Thus it was? Well, perhaps there were other mo- 
tives, for certainly Grosset used to say: “A-ha! 
These rough diamonds! Why some of the fellows 
with patched pants, and such hats — hats that back- 
East you would turn upside down and put in a bush 
for birds to nest in — are worth thousands. I’ve 
seen old prospectors here that, if you met them back- 
East, would make you squint round to see that the 
policeman on the corner had an eye on them — and 
them worth thousands! It is a good scheme to be 
civil to a man here even if his hat-brim has lost the 
stiffening. He may have money to spend. I always 
81 


82 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


remember that when these fellows come into the 
store.” 

The chronicler, recalling that speech, fears that 
Grosset was democrat with a difference. However, 
he is in the story, mixed up with Marsden, Sam, 
and the bucket-tramway, so he is now introduced. 
He did not eat at Timpkin’s, except at breakfast. 
He rented a room, one with netting on the windows, 
the largest room on the first floor, a kind of sitting- 
room with a bed in a niche. He found it more like 
a home, he said, to live there than in a hotel; 
and he wandered from restaurant to restaurant as 
fancy ordered, or a new waitress arriving in town 
claimed inspection, for his dinner and his supper. 
Not often did he sit on the verandah with the boys. 
He did not make a practice of it. But he could 
do it. 

To-night, after supper, he looked as does the kind 
of man whose own society is too much for him 
when his one crony is out of town. Finding Sam 
alone on the balcony he sat down and cast forth 
for sociability with some remark on the air. He 
was not banal. He did not say, “It has been a 
fine day.” He made an appeal by something less 
trite, by: “Well, sir, this is a climate, and an 
evening, to make a man glad he was born.” An 
elated young man like Sam did not have to be told 
so twice before responding with voice of agreement. 

That Grosset’s face did not attract him was 
neither here nor there. The massive cheek bones, 


BURNING HIS BOATS 


83 


the under-lip that seemed not pouting but as if rolled 
over, the upper-lip squared and thrust out by large 
teeth — all these items might, thought Sam, have 
been bequeathed to him by his father and mother. 
It was just when Sam decided to like him against 
his instinct — for, “hang it all,” thought he, “it’s a 
short life and if we only chatter with those beside 
whom we feel that we could put our backs to the 
wall, with men in whose company we could die for 
the same cause, we would often be mute” — it was 
just then, when Sam decided to be reciprocatingly 
pleasant, that Grosset nudged him in the side with 
his elbow and, bending forward, wore the air of 
one on the point of making a disclosure. Sam looked 
sidewise at him, awaiting the meaning of this pan- 
tomime. He felt the nudge as a familiarity, and 
was annoyed at himself for what he promptly called 
his lack of sociability. 

“There’s a girl in town,” said Grosset softly, wag- 
ging his head. “I can’t tell you how she upsets me. 
I don’t look it, maybe, but I’m in a ferment. That’s 
right. That’s the word. Restless — Oh!” he gave 
his head a slight toss. “I’m persona grata at her 
folks’ house, but — I don’t quite know where I am. 
I don’t know if advances are expected, or if the 
fur would fly if they were offered. I feel — whoo ! — 
I feel like that.” 

Humour came to Sam’s aid. His inclination was 
to throw back his head and laugh, but the intense 
seriousness of Grosset caused him to dismiss hilarity. 


84 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


Further — he knew that if he laughed like that the 
description of symptoms would be over, and he 
wanted to know what Grosset had on his mind. 

“You see,” said Grosset, “she might turn me 
down. On the other hand she may be thinking 
I’m scared to come to business. Oh, I can’t tell 
you how I feel. I sometimes think I shall go off 
my head. After every visit I go over it all and try 
to find out if she’s giving me openings accidentally, 
if they aren’t openings, if they are just natural 
innocence — I can’t express myself. Do you know 
what I mean?” 

“You admire innocence?” asked Sam, casually. 

“Tremendously! Immensely!” Grosset tucked 
his chin back in his collar in a manner intended to 
show sense of appreciation of innocence. “None 
more so! But if anyone could whisper to me that 
this woman is saying the things she has said so as 
to give me a hint — you see — ” he wagged his head, 
and left the rest of that consideration in air, breathed 
a great breath and began at a new place : “I think 

- — I think — whoo! d d if I know what I think. 

I don’t know what to do. I feel so that I some- 
times almost decide to go and call with the definite 
intention of proposing,” and he turned and glared 
at Sam, and Sam looking at him — well, Sam was 
Sam, and he wanted to laugh. He did not laugh, 
however, though he showed merriment in his eyes 
maybe. Grosset sighed. 

“Whoo!” he said again. “I think I shall go and 


BURNING HIS BOATS 


85 


have a walk. I don’t know where I am there,” and 
rising he departed along the plank in the dusk, leav- 
ing Sam, after the retiring Grosset had vanished, to 
contemplate the black bulk of the mountains, and 
the lights of the scattered homes twinkling along and 
up the hill. Timpkin appeared in the doorway as 
Grosset went away, and sitting down said: 

“That fellow Grosset been speaking to you?” 

“Grosset? I don’t know his name. I only see 
him here at breakfast.” 

“Yes, that’s him. He’s a bit batty — crazy — loco 
‘ — bug-house.” 

“I quite believe it,” said Sam. 

“Comes in some nights with his eyes shining like 
lamps and buttonholes me to tell me about some 
woman he don’t know where he is with. What does 
she mean by this? What does she mean by that? 
Can I help him? He’s surely got her on the brain.” 

“He may imagine half of it,” suggested Sam. 

“That’s half his trouble!” Timpkin chuckled. 
“He knows he’s got into that state. He said to me 
a night or two ago: Tve got, into such a condition 
that I wonder if I imagine half of it.’ Huh! He 
don’t imagine it. He should quit walking in a circle. 
But women are surely funny! He would find out 
what she meant right smart if he didn’t go near her 
for a little while. That would be such a right 
change in him that she would show her hand def- 
inite, and start in to lead him on more clear, think- 
ing him a blind owl, and do it so obvious that he 


86 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


would propose on the jump. Expect she’s one of 
these women who like to have a fellow on a string. 
He’s surely full with this here amative dementia.” 

But the rest of what Timpkin had to say, theoris- 
ing on the case, was lost to Sam; for that young 
man was comparing Grosset with himself, himself 
with Grosset. Had he a touch of the same malady? 

Was this stir that came to him from the eyes, and 
the passing, and the God knows what, of the lady 
of the crossing, the lady of the depot platform, the 
same malady? Was he a self-righteous prig? What- 
ever it was, it was turning the non-self-conscious Sam 
Haig into a self-conscious young man. 

The idiocy of Grosset, with sweet women in the 
world, he considered; and he thought how that un- 
known young woman who had so moved him down 
at the freight-shed as he trucked the noisy cans 
might be pestered by a Grosset, and he, a pauper, 
be unable to protect her, away out of her sphere, 
in a cut-rate boarding-house' — eating all his meals 
there! On forty-five dollars a month no man, Sam 
mused, can make love; on forty-five dollars a month 
a man does not live; he exists. Why had he not 
served apprenticeship to some trade that had a 
strong union instead of trying to educate himself? 
What a world! He dismissed his private thoughts 
and turned to Timpkin. 

“You,” he remarked, “seem to be in a strange 
mood to-night.” 

“Me? I’m desperate. Boom town — boom wages 


BURNING HIS BOATS 


87 


— boom prices. I tell you what it is — if a hotel 
man wants to make money he’s got to sell them 
booze. I believe it’s the same with everything. IVs 
the booze, so to speak, that pays. I’m nearly crazy 
owing to bills — owing bills — owing to owing bills! 
Well, I’ve got to go. Mrs. Timpkin is crying. It’s 
hell when you got a wife crying. That’s what gets 
my goat! Went in and found her weeping, and 
she keeps smilin’ all the time, too, when I’m around. 
Good-night. Keep smilin’. It’s a great world all 
the same.” 

Sam sat on there while one by one the boarders 
returned from their evening’s outing. In a broad 
verandah of a house up the hill, under a Chinese 
lantern faintly lit, a man sat beside a woman who 
reclined in a hammock. They sat out there in 
the night in a pool of mellow radiance. They 
suggested to him the joy of love. He consid- 
ered the lady of the crossing — the lady of the 
freight-shed procession. Moths wavered past in the 
darkness, abruptly appeared in the rays of light from 
the door, oscillated along that beam and rebounded 
on the mosquito netting at the doorway. At least 
Timpkin could afford mosquito netting there — for 
the sake of appearances. But as mosquitoes got in 
at many of the windows it was to no great pur- 
pose. 

The mountains, away above the hillside homes 
loomed up black and tremendous; and the scatter- 
ing of houses (the simple thought came to simple 


88 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


Sam) were full of people planning and hoping, 
flirting and loving. He gazed up at the towering 
Mount Drew. The lights went out one by one in 
the houses. 

“Think of it — a hundred years hence and not one 
of the people here will be alive,” he mused — mused 
also of those eyes that had met his, and been aware, 
to-day, at the freight-shed. Oh, she had been aware. 
She had been aware as well as he ! 

He looked up almost furtively at the mountain’s 
looming bulk, and when he rose and passed indoors 
it was almost as though he slunk away from Mount 
Drew and the moon coming over. Indoors the 
moths fluttered round the lamp, and fell among the 
checker-men that some untidy players had left out 
of the box, on the board and beside the board, as 
the game had ended, one set victorious, the other 
frazzled. Later Mr. Timpkin would come in, put 
the draughts away in the box, and turn down the 
lamp, and, if he noticed them, with a puff of his 
breath blow the dead moths on to the floor that Sing 
would sweep over next morning. Sam stole on, up 
to bed, past doors whence came the sounds of snor- 
ing and deep breathing. But the long rest in the 
open air had made him sleepy, and half an hour 
later he was as deeply unaware of life as the moun- 
tain that had overawed him. When he awoke the 
hilarious sun-rays were flooding the chamber and it 
was a new day. 

There was a sense of something wrong in the 


BURNING HIS BOATS 


89 


dining-room when Sam entered that morning. You 
know the way in which you can “tap” a state of 
affairs on going into a room — feel that something 
is afoot, some surprise in store, some trouble ahead, 
or some fun in the background to be produced at 
the fitting moment? The nominal “tapping” is 
doubtless unconscious observation, but the cumula- 
tive hints are caught so subtly that it seems to be a 
psychic matter. 

Mrs. Timpkin smiled, gave her cheerful “Good- 
morning” all round. The Chinaman’s expression 
could not, of course, be read at all. That was be- 
yond the power of Caucasian to fathom. Timpkin 
attended to his guests with vigour. You have been 
behind the scenes and know that Mrs. Timpkin’s 
tears had grieved her husband. He was furious for 
her sake with all the cut-raters. That was all. He 
banged down their porridge with indignation. 
“Mush ? There’s your mush !” he blustered at them. 
Mrs. Timpkin had wept; that was his grievance 
toward the world. 

“There is something wrong with the domestic 
arrangements,” surmised those birds of passage that 
had alighted at Timpkin’s, recalling, perhaps, mem- 
ories of little bits of morning friction in their own 
homes; and those touched with home-sickness were 
speedily cured. It may be hazarded that it is less 
often to escape Trouble (with a capital) than to 
escape merely from little niggle-nagglings and har- 
moniums and things like that that most young men 


90 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


flee from urban homes to “excitements” on moun- 
tain-sides across the sea, or to deserts, or unfenced 
prairies, or to such young cities as Kootenay that 
one can see from end to end, standing in the main 
street, places small as a forgotten village yet more 
palpitating with life and youth and hope than any 
metropolis. Yet it seemed not, after all, to be a 
tiff between the proprietor and his wife that occa- 
sioned this morning’s impression of upset. Those 
who suspected that something was wrong and cyn- 
ically opined “Been having a row!” noticed the 
glances Timpkin gave his wife now and then, re- 
alised that they were glances of anxiety, but not the 
anxiety of a henpecked man who had received a cur- 
tain lecture. They were the glances of a man wor- 
ried for — not by — his spouse. 

When Timpkin pounced on a boarder who was 
notoriously stingy and exclaimed, “Excuse me, sir, 
but that is your neighbour’s portion. If you want 
a second helping will you kindly ask for it — and 
the price will be put on your bill?” — then the board- 
ers suspected that the air of irritability was due to 
dollars and not to connubial misery. Quite under- 
standable ! Prices were not coming down — yet 
every day attempts were made in town to bring 
wages down. Doubtless Timpkin had his money 
troubles too, as well as they, the parallel troubles of 
a boarding-house keeper. 

Sam, knowing the cause of the air of friction, 
reminded by it of the everlasting money-basis of 


BURNING HIS BOATS 


91 


life, had a renewal of his annoyance over the unde- 
niable fact that he had not yet found his gold brick. 
When he rose to leave and bowed to Mrs. Timpkin 
her eyes brightened, her face beamed, but her lips 
trembled. Arrived at the freight-shed the day’s 
work began with Webley — he too with his wor- 
ries — glaring at a pile of way-bills clipped to his 
checking board. 

“All right, boys — trucks, boys, trucks. Here’s 

a string to get the innards out of 

! Stoves! Stoves! Handle them 

gently.” 

Till noon the gang toiled unceasingly, unloading 
from the freight-car string, rattling through the 
freight-shed, and reloading on to the wagons that 
came rocking down from town. The Chicago kid 
climbed to the top of a refrigerator car and opening 
the ice-safe eased up and out a bit of ice to put 
in the drinking pail. They perspired for five hours, 
and drank iced water in snatches as they passed 
the big bucket with the tin dipper. 

All the while the dear, middle-aged face of Mrs. 
Timpkin was before Sam. 

“They are up against it,” he thought. And a 
little later, still seeing her: “They’ve got it in the 
neck!” he murmured; and later still: “They are 
nearly on their uppers” In the Land of the Al- 
mighty Dollar there are many phrases to imply 
lack of dollars, perhaps the secret being that where 
big fortunes are often made with more celerity than 


92 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


in the land we may call the Land of the Almighty 
Quid — for money very definitely “talks” in the lit- 
tle old island too — there are also fortunes lost — 
and also many fortuntes not made at all. 

It occurred to Sam that he had been over four 
weeks at Timpkin’s boarding-house. He had ar- 
ranged to pay monthly after that first cut-rate week, 
and to-night he should settle his bill. It did not 
enter his head to ask for an advance from the rail- 
way; he did not realise that the money was already 
due, and his; he merely mused, as he trucked and 
sweated, on Mrs. Timpkin’s tears, and upon the 
fact of his promise to pay monthly. There was 
something else as well to move him toward the de- 
cision to leave the freight-shed. There generally 
is something else . I don’t mean to say that the 
something else is always, or even generally, the main 
reason for our nominally good deeds, if only we’d 
own up. I don’t think it was in this case. He 
wouldn’t have flung up his billet simply through 
boredom at the sight of stoves, at the sound of 
rattling trucks, at the flies in the waterpail — tepid 
water as soon as the ice melted. He wanted to 
pay his bill, for Mrs. Timpkin’s sake, and he added: 
“It’s a poor enough job anyhow!” Honestly it 
was not the other way round that he arrived, by 
noon, at the decision that caused him, when Webley 
broke out, “All right, boys, go and lunch. Twelve 
o’clock,” to ask if he might have his time-check 
to present in the office. Hot and irritable, Webley 


BURNING HIS BOATS 


93 


seemed not greatly astonished, not greatly inter- 
ested. 

“What? Going ?” he said. “Oh, very well. Got 
a better job, I suppose. That’s! it — that’s it! Soon 
as a man knows the ropes here off he goes. Yes, I’ll 
make out your time.” 

Thus it was that Sam had the glorious experience 
of standing under heaven, a few minutes after noon, 
feeling himself a free man — bossing nobody, bossed 
by nobody, a free man — a sensation he clung to 
ardently, ousting from his mind the month-old mem- 
ory of facing life with seven dollars, ousting from 
his mind the calculation of forty-five dollars (for 
there had been no overtime so far) less thirty-seven- 
fifty for Timpkin, and trying to enjoy, without these 
distractions and detractions, that sense of being free, 
of being alive, of being tied to nothing. 

But as he returned along Dawson Street the cal- 
culation was made in his mind willy-nilly, clear as if 
he saw it on a blackboard: 

$ 45 - 00 . 

$37.50. 


$ 7 - 50 . 


Of the future he knew nothing. The seven-fifty 
would dwindle. He needed a new pair of trousers, 
and passing the Kootenay Clothing Stores he was 


94 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


reminded of the fact on seeing a window-card with 
the legend: 

READY-MADE PANTS OF EVERY KIND 
FIVE DOLLARS — FIVE DOLLARS. 

So he entered, and Grosset, standing at the bad* 
of the store, advanced to meet him, toying with a 
quill toothpick. 

“Huh!” he said. “Bad — I feel bad to-day. 
Didn’t call last night — up there. You know where 
I mean. What do you think? I saw her to-day, 
and she said she had expected me. ‘How?’ I asked. 
Didn’t know — just sort of expected me. O God, 

0 God! I wish I could make sure. You see, if 

1 plunged and was turned down ” his gaze 

gloomed past Sam on to the side-walk. 

“I should like to buy a pair of pants,” said Sam. 
“Ah! Pants !” exclaimed Grosset. “Yes. Pants! 
Just let me run this tape round your waist for size. 
Ah yes ! What would you make of a woman saying 
she expected me ? I can’t make out if she’s laughing 
at me, or laughing — O my God — to me, to me, 
as it were. You know what I mean?” and he glared 
redly at Sam, and laid upon the counter, plucking 
them with professional thumb and forefinger (but 
with abstracted air), the desired pants. “That’s a 
good quality. Fine cut. Couldn’t do better. O 
my God — that’s how I feel. Whoo, if I found she 
was playing with some other fellow — * — ” 


BURNING HIS BOATS 


95 


With his new trousers packed up, and a word of 
formal sympathy to Grosset, Sam strolled home- 
wards, washed, descended to the dining-room. On 
the stairs he almost turned because of the sounds 
coming from below ; but hunger urged him, instead, 
to make a heralding noise and proceed. Evidently 
the last diners had gone, and Mr. Timpkin was try- 
ing to amuse his wife by imitating none other than 
Grosset. 

“Whoo! That’s how I feel!” he was, whooping. 
‘‘Yes, if I could only be sure which way the cat would 
jump — whoo ! That’s what’s the matter with me.” 

“Oh, Lincoln, Lincoln, you do make me laugh!” 
came the voice of Mrs. Timpkin, but it seemed as 
though instead of laughing she might weep. 

Sam trod heavily on the stairs, advanced with 
heavy plod worthy of a “shovel-stiff.” When he 
entered the dining room he found that Mr. and Mrs. 
Timpkin were at dinner, one at either end of the far 
table. 

“Hullo! You’re late,” said Timpkin. 

Mrs. Timpkin sat staring at the remains of her 
repast, while her husband, coffee-cup before him, 
looked at Sam with a searching face, fearful lest 
the young man had heard his nonsense. 

“Sing!” he shouted. “Sing!” 

The cook opened the kitchen door and put his 
head round. 

“Sing he go sweep-up top-side. You wantum?” 
he asked. 


96 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Any more dinner? Gentleman late here.’* 

“Oh yes. Livah and bacon — steak an’ onion — 
po-ak and bean, vely good, hee-hee!” 

Sam made his choice of the least unutterable com- 
bination for that hot day, and sat down. 

“You are late, Mr. Haig,” said Mrs. Timpkin. 

“Yes — I must apologise.” 

“Oh, that’s all right.” 

“I may as well settle up while I’m waiting,” con- 
tinued Sam. “I owe you a month’s money now.” 

He took the wad from his pocket and counted 
out the notes. Having counted, he glanced up, and 
found, that Timpkin and Mrs. Timpkin had appar- 
ently been fossilised, or had fallen into the state of 
Lot’s wife. The raising of his head resuscitated 
them. He rose and stepped across to their table. 

“There’s the thirty-seven dollars fifty cents,” he 
said. 

“The what?” asked Mrs. Timpkin, her voice 
quivering. 

“The thirty-seven-fifty,” said her husband grimly. 

At that she broke down. By one of those coinci- 
dences that often happen, it was exactly the sum 
necessary to add to a sum already scraped together 
to liquidate a debt that hung over them, menacing 
the business with extinction. Part payment had 
failed to satisfy; all was demanded. 

The cook, with velvet tread, entered the room, 
glanced at the bills on the table, with the fifty-cent 
piece atop, glanced at Mrs. Timpkin, and under- 


BURNING HIS BOATS 


97 


stood. For once his expression was clear to Occi- 
dental eyes. As he looked, and looked away, sym- 
pathy was on his podgy face — he was of the podgy 
type. He addressed himself to Sam: 

“You eat heah? You sit this table? Oh yes. 
You likee licee puddin* ? You likee stewed ploon?” 

“You give him the rice pudding, Tom, and the 
stewed prunes also,” said Timpkin. 

“Vely good. Oh vely good.” 

Sam turned abruptly to his table, and paid heed 
to nothing in the world except the dishes before him. 


PART II: CAPRICCIOSO 


CHAPTER I 

“that not impossible she” 

I T happened that the day after Sam left the 
freight-shed a brother of Mrs. Timpkin’s (one 
Smith if you will pardon the ubquitous name) 
came to Kootenay on his way to a railway construc- 
tion camp, and Sam was introduced. Doubtless his 
honesty in paying his bill when he drew his month’s 
wages, instead of running away, was belauded to 
Smith by the appreciative Mrs. Timpkin; for though 
virtues, to be sure, seemed just right to her, and no 
more, in contrast with vices they seemed to be more. 
So many trusted boarders had put thumbs to noses 
at the trust, and “skipped” when it suited them, 
that Sam’s mere decency had aureoled him in the 
eyes of the Timpkins. 

That brother inveigled the young man to talk of 
his prospects, and eventually asked him why he did 
not go in for some skilled work, such as engineering. 
Sam, being that last hope of America, a young man 
who would not call himself an engineer unless he 
could either build a bridge or set a-going and stop 
a Transatlantic liner (who did not understand that 
the great way to get on is to call yourself an engineer 
93 


“THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE’* 99 

if you have ever put on a kettle to boil and stayed be- 
side it till steam came), replied that he wasn’t an 
engineer. Now Smith was an engineer. He was 
the engineer of a steam-shovel. 

“You could learn,” said he. “You come with me. 
I’ll take you as a wiper on my steam-shovel.” 

“I might blow it up !” Sam pointed out. 

“That ain’t likely,” answered Smith. “All you 
have to do is to say you’re an engineer, and I’ll show 
you the rest. There’s nothing to it. You’ll get 
your sixty a month as a wiper, and within a fortnight 
you’ll be able to drive that steam-shovel into a bank 
as if you was drivin’ a spoon into jam.” 

So Sam departed to the head waters of Astley 
Creek, away back of Mount Drew. Near to the 
camp, upon a front of wild hill, along which passed 
the new “grade,” was a board a-top a post, and on 
the board was the word Henderson. It would figure 
in the time-tables when the railroad was completed, 
and some day there might really be a town there. 
At the moment there was but the board, a tribute 
to one Henderson, ranchman, whose ranch lay three 
miles back in the rolling waste. A sociable man was 
Henderson, and one Sunday he rode over to “rub- 
ber-neck” at the construction camp, to see what the 
steam-ploughs, and dynamite, and shovel-stiffs were 
doing to the old hills along there — and also to see 
if there was anyone with whom he might pow-pow. 
He was no mixer. He used to say: “I ain’t no 
mixer. I carry a riddle in my head, and I pop 


100 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


persons into it, and shake it a trifle till I know who’s 
who. And I’m willing for other men to sift me 
some before asking me to put my knees under their 
table.” 

He sifted Sam. And almost every Sunday that 
young man was to be seen of the bald-headed eagles 
and coyotes (for human inhabitants there were none 
between the camp and the ranch) stepping out for 
Henderson’s — with an eye alert for any roaming 
cows, the only dangerous creatures, perhaps, on that 
bit of rolling country. Men on foot have been glad 
to shin up a tree there from cows that either re- 
sented (or were curious to danger point regarding) 
two-legged strangers. A horse with a man a-top 
they understood to be a kind of super-horse; but 
a man without a horse — well, it was wise to step 
lively in places where the trees thinned out. 

On the first of July, when all the ranch hands 
were in town with their June wages, it was suddenly 
remembered that Henderson’s sister had been invited 
to come to the ranch for a change of air, and had 
fixed that day for her coming; and Mrs. Henderson 
wondered if it would be imposing on Sam’s friend- 
liness to ask him to drive over to Cranberry to meet 
the expected guest? “Tail and dark,” was Hender- 
son’s description. “Wish I could go myself, but with 
all the boys away I’m kind of in a fix. Mildred’s 
likely to be the only female to come off the cars. 
Don’t be scared to flag them all if there are more 
than one.” 


THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 1 


101 


Sam acquiesced, and was soon enjoying the feel 
of reins in his hand again, spinning along the wagon- 
road in the high “democrat.” Only one “female” 
alighted from the cars; but if there had been hun- 
dreds Sam would have taken the opportunity to 
step up to her, as she appeared on the platform 
and, hat in hand, enquire if she were Henderson’s 
sister. For this was She, this was She. His advance 
and bow, as it happened, were all above-board, not 
strategical, she being the only “female,” indeed she 
was the only passenger, to alight at Cranberry, that 
little “jerk-water” town of a store, a hotel, the oper- 
ator’s house and a shack or two where bronzed 
section-men lived, and, on either side of the track, 
whitewashed cattle-corrals. You can imagine what 
kind of a sense of things happening Sam experienced. 
Here, to him, was Destiny interested in his life. 

Her voice was in keeping with her eyes and her 
hair and the frocks she wore and the motions of her 
carriage — each asking to be captured in a line or 
two by some artist, or taken impression of by crafty 
modeller. 

“You have come to meet me from my brother?” 
she hazarded, as Sam swept hat from head. 

He bowed assent, and indicated the rig at the end 
of the diminutive depot-house, where the horses were 
trying to bolt, running forward as far as the hitching- 
rope would allow, then backing till neck and out- 
thrust head of the near horse were in a line with 
the taut line of the tethering rope. The locomotive 


102 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


clanged away, the string of cars snaked after it, and 
the horses glared at the retreating train as beasts 
amazed that so terrible an alligator of a monster 
should renounce the attempt to swallow them — har- 
ness, democrat and all. Sam stowed away her two 
suit-cases, and with great anxiety, having unhitched, 
held the lines in one hand the while he prepared to 
aid her to climb to the seat. 

“Steady, boys, steady !” he implored. 

He caught her elbow as she raised a foot to at- 
tempt embarkation. That cryptic smile that haunted 
him was on her face. It intrigued him, as they use 
the word in these days — Oh amazingly. But he 
could not dote upon it at that moment; it had to be 
side-issue. With a graceful whirl of draperies she 
stepped into her place and he, regathering the lines, 
swiftly swung up beside her, again considering that 
here was the hand of Destiny. By the deliberate, 
collected way in which he managed the unnerved 
horses she might, had she been interested in him, 
have hazarded an opinion that he had some kind of 
determination, that he might, upon occasion, handle 
a situation strongly. What she did perceive pres- 
ently was that he was absurdly, deliciously, glad that 
he could handle his restive charges. He drove with 
a faint edge of swagger. He sat up to the task firm- 
ly. Yes, she was sure that her driver was just on 
the verge of showing off. Perched up here beside 
the woman that Destiny had dropped in the seat, he 
felt as if he were on a mountain-top. The convey- 


“THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE” 103 

ance had grown, it would appear, another foot or 
two while he went on to the platform to meet her. 
When they spoke, they spoke together. 

“I have seen you before,” said he. 

‘‘Haven’t I seen you before?” she asked. 

They had turned their heads one to the other, 
he to make his statement, she her interrogation, and 
her eyes were bright, very much alive, as he looked 
into them. 

“I saw you the first day I came to Kootenay,” 
said he, “as I drove up from the depot. You were 
crossing Hoskins Avenue, at the corner of Dawson 
Street, on the south side, and the rig I was in turned 
north.” 

She looked far off, as though noting the long 
tranquil undulations of the brown and green and 
yellow-splashed foot-hills to left. 

“Fancy remembering!” she murmured, and he 
caught another expression of her face — one sweetly 
pensive. 

“And then I saw you one morning on Dawson 
Street. You were just ahead of me. You went into 
a grocery store.” 

She gave a little inclination of her head, raised 
her brows, but said nothing. 

“Then you were on the depot-platform once, when 
I was trucking ” 

Her eyes danced. 

“That’s where I saw you,” she said. “I remem- 
ber thinking what different kinds of men there were 


104 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


there — just for something to do, I suppose, till 
they ” 

“Yes, till they looked round,” said Sam. “You 
had on a light blue frock. You had a sun- 
shade.” 

Her eyes were full of fun now, or joie de vivre. 
Turning her head she smiled at him as though he 
were telling some humorous or delightful story. 

“Did you like the Hotel Kootenay?” she enquired; 
and he frowned, trying to take her meaning. 

“Oh!” he said, understanding — for the Kootenay 
was also on Hoskins Avenue, opposite the Grand 
Western. Evidently she thought he had been bound 
thither on the ocasion of his first sight of her. “I 
didn’t put up at the Kootenay . No — I say you as 
the rig turned down Hoskins Avenue, but it was the 
Grand Western rig I was on.” 

“Oh yes,” said she. 

She must surely, thought Sam, look upon him 
as a wealthy crank, with a foible for trucking, if 
she imagined that he had put up at the Kootenay! 

“You can handle horses,” she remarked with ad- 
miration. 

He had wanted her to note that fact; she made 
him aware of his masculinity. 

“Do you like driving?” he asked. 

“I don’t think I could trust myself with these,” 
she owned up. “My brother won’t have horses 
without what he calls ‘gip and ginger.’ I like driv- 
ing, but ” 


THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 


105 


“Try if you like,” he suggested. “They are pull- 
ing hard.” 

“Are they? I can see they are fresh. They know 
they’re going home, too.” 

She had her eyes on the lines. 

“If you put your hand in front of mine you can 
feel the pull,” he said. 

Smiling, she glanced at him, a sidelong smile that 
brought up in his memory all his glimpses of her. 

Oh yes — this was veritably She. The miracle 
had happened. Sixty miles from Kootenay, here 
she was sitting by him — nay, more, was now putting 
her daintily gloved hand before his, and slipping her 
fingers over the reins to feel the pull. That horse- 
man’s sense of being en rapport with the horses 
through the leather lines was suddenly eclipsed by 
something else. She had her hand there only a few 
moments, but he had time to wish that she would 
hold them long, to fear she would release, to ex- 
ult that she did not, and then to draw a deep breath 
|s she sat back again, hands in lap. 


CHAPTER II 


Henderson's ranch 

S MITH, at the construction camp, wondered 
why his wiper was so careful in his shaving 
and brushing and general grooming on the 
Sunday mornings; he considered that though Mrs. 
Henderson — wife of the big bluff rancher who had 
visited them and invited Sam to spend any Sun- 
day he could at the ranch — was doubtless a charm- 
ing lady, she was not eligible for attentions, and sus- 
pected that some neighbouring rancher must be 
blessed with engaging daughters. He knew the 
Hendersons had no daughters, for he had one day 
casually asked: “They got any family, these friends 
you’ve made?” and had been told no. Breakfast 
over, the young man went off with alacrity, and 
Smith saw no more of him till Monday morning, 
when, wakening, there would he be in his bunk, 
evidently having stolen in quietly to the sleeping 
camp on the late Sunday night. Smith noticed, too, 
the brighter (and at the same time dreamful) ex- 
pression of Sam’s eyes. When it came to scrub- 
bing clean with high speed on a certain Wednes- 
day evening (as well as on Sunday mornings), after 
a hot day’s work, and going off smartly along the 
grade, scrambling up to the bluff too and fading off 
106 


HENDERSON’S RANCH 


107 


from camp, Smith knew-— “sure thing” — there was 
a woman in it. 

So far from the notion being to give her sister- 
in-law a quiet time, Mrs. Henderson saw to it that, 
from up and down the valley, neighbours were culled 
to meet the young and pretty relative. She would 
give her a “good time.” 

On arriving that Wednesday evening Sam found 
Mildred discussing some of the recent callers, and 
engaged in trimming hats. 

“They’re fairly fallen in love with her,” declared 
Mrs. Henderson, wfith a kind of elderly roguish 
glance at Mildred; and Sam wondered if he should 
reply “Inevitably!” so as to inform Mildred, oblique- 
ly, of his own allegiance. But even as the word was 
on his tongue he feared it sounded mere compliment 
— a touch flippant; so it remained unspoken, and he 
had not the consolation of knowing that she had read 
his glance, and as good as heard the comment he 
had not voiced. 

“Always doing something for somebody,” contin- 
ued Mrs. Henderson. “The Gillies girls down the 
valley couldn’t take their eyes off her hat. Wher- 
ever had she got it? They just screamed when she 
told them she’d made it herself, didn’t they?” 

Mildred Henderson looked up and laughed, her 
long fingers manipulating the pieces of millinery; 
but it was not the hat but the deft hands Sam ad- 
mired. 

“Of course she had to offer to trim hats for 


108 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


them,” said Mrs. Henderson. “That’s Mildred!” 

“I shall have my head turned,” broke forth Mil- 
dred, glancing up with laughing protest at Sam. 
“Can’t you stop her? There!” and she held up the 
hat, finished for their contemplation. 

“Exquisite !” cried her sister-in-law. “You’ve cer- 
tainly trimmed a hat. It’s prettier than your own 
that they saw and envied.” 

“I believe it is,” said Mildred, slowly. “Well, 
that won’t do ! I’ll just take out this rose from the 
side. It’s too chic a finish altogether. There ! That’s 
good enough.” 

“It’s surely pretty,” said Mrs. Henderson, 
“though that one rose you’ve taken off again just 
finished it.” 

“I’ll remember it for another time,” remarked 
Mildred. 

“Where do you get the flowers?” asked Sam. 

“From a French woman I know. She came from 
a village in France where everybody seems to make 
artificial flowers.” 

“But do you carry a store of them with you when 
you go holidaying?” 

“That’s Mildred!” explained Mrs. Henderson 
again. “She brought some as a present for me — 
knew I’d like them.” 

“And now I’m thinking of using up my presents 
on other folks’ hats !” said Mildred, making a moue 
at herself. “That’s generous of me, isn’t it?” 

Henderson rose and felt for his pipe. If a man 


HENDERSON’S RANCH 


109 


does not idolise his sister and think her perfection 
he is apt to find a little of her society go a long 
way. He feels for the nepenthe in his pocket. 

“Say, Haig, I want you to come and look at a 
new tree-sprayer I got,” said he. 

“D n the tree-sprayer,” thought Sam. 

But he was not always thus plucked away from 
worship. Five minutes of looking at a tree-sprayer 
with Mildred’s elder brother — but Mildred not ac- 
companying them — and seeing how it worked, 
seemed like half-an-hour, while half-an-hour with 
Mildred seemed but a fugitive five minutes. That 
was one of the symptoms of the malady. 

Those were glamorous days on which he saw her, 
came into the radius of her spell. There was the 
day of their meeting when he drove her to her 
brother’s ranch. There were the red-letter Sun- 
days; there was the evening of the hat-trimming, 
when he hated Henderson for coarsely and unfeel- 
ingly carrying him off from watching the play of 
her hands to look at a gross commercial pump with 
the patent number stencilled triumphantly on it. 

There was another time of seeing her and talking 
to her — when the Gillies girls were there, and young 
Gillies, and — but what matter their names and ages, 
the colour of their hair and eyes, and where were 
the dimples of the ladies, and what were the qual- 
ities of the males. It was “a party.” That was 
all that could be said. And, at a party, a man 
enamoured has to be more circumspect than when 


110 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


alone with the near relatives of his idol. There is 
a high chivalric generosity in these matters. When 
the crowd comes, and other males are there, the 
perfect and altruistic male does not make it appear 
that he has “fixed things up” with the girl; he gives 
her scope to select — he doesn’t run the risk of em- 
barrassing her (lest she have no use for him) by 
making it seem to others that all is arranged between 
them. 

It was a party — that is all (as has beeen said) 
that could be said of it — a party from which Sam 
went home in a condition of elation, in a blend of 
hopefulness and hopelessness. His quickest way 
back was across the ranch pasture field — the home- 
field where they put up hay, for this is not a tale 
of the old long-horn free-range days — and there was 
a gate there. On the first Sunday he had climbed 
over it slowly; on the second he had vaulted it; on 
the night of the party — but this is to anticipate. 

He left the camp without supper, on that even- 
ing, to the vast amusement of Smith. The fun 
would be in full swing at Henderson’s by the time 
they blew off steam and chanted “Knock off, boys, 
six o’clock,” at the construction camp M So Sam 
washed and shaved, but tarried not to eat. 

Living upon some kind of love, sure thing, mur- 
mured Smith. 

At high speed did Sam hit the trail his comings 
and goings were wearing across the hills. The 
juniors would be dancing in the big hall-way, de- 


HENDERSON’S RANCH 


111 


spite the hot season; Henderson would be dealing 
the cards with his cronies, or they would be gath- 
ered on the screen porch damning the railway com- 
pany, or discussing weight of wool, or pitting size 
against succulence (or crispness against softness) of 
apples; and the elder ladies would be saying it was 
nice to see the young people enjoying themselves. 
Left, right, Sam swung on, collar in hand to don 
at the last rise so as to arrive looking fresh. The 
last light lay on the world and lengthy shadows of 
the hill-crests on the grass, amid which grasshoppers 
crackled in that faint fashion that heralds the day’s 
end. 

Supper was to be delayed — not for Sam alone, 
but for several of the guests. They came from near 
and far; from live miles off — from sixty miles off. 
Not all had automobiles, but those that had picked 
up the others. The party began to gather at that 
most distant point, sixty miles away, in the after- 
noon, and people were laughing over the question of 
how to pack together into a four-seater, and who 
was to ride on the step, while Mrs. Henderson still 
wore a cotton wrapper over her silk gown, super- 
intending the culinary arrangements. 

By the time Sam came to the ranch, and the 
dogs gave tongue, all had settled down to the even- 
ing’s merriment. In the dining-room there were 
half-a-dozen little tables ready for the guests, and 
after he had shaken the great welcoming hand of 
Henderson, and made a bow here and there, a lull 


112 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


came between dance and song, and between disser- 
tation on wool and “shop-talk” on grazing rights. It 
was the lull for which Mrs. Henderson had been 
waiting, to shepherd her guests into their places. 
To Sam it was a romantic supper-room, because his 
reality over at the camp was so different. His home 
there was an old box-car; or, to be precise, a third 
part of it, the engineers’ end being partitioned off 
from the two-thirds where the shovel-gang slept. It 
contained a couple of bunks, a small table, and nails 
had been hammered into the rickety partition on 
which to hang their ward-robe. Meals were served 
in two-thirds of another car, the remaining third of 
which was the cook’s quarters. The dining-table 
was of deal, covered with sheeny cloth, streaked with 
blue veins in some wild aim to look like marble. 
The communal serving dishes were tin basins, the 
cups were nigh half-an-inch thick when of china, 
but most were of enamelled tin, and on many the 
enamel was chipped. To one living on caviare and 
reclining on cushions the camp might have seemed 
romantic, for one man’s romance is another man’s 
reality. But Henderson’s supper-room was a dream 
to the second engineer of the steam-shovel. 

Think not Sam failed to enjoy life at the camp — 
but it made the more delectable this successful 
rancher’s spread, made the more wonderful the big 
polished floor-space here, with the bear rugs under 
foot, the array of little tables so tastefully decor- 
ated. Maybe the dollar question did crop up again 


HENDERSON’S RANCH 


113 

in his mind when he found that he was not to sit 
at the table where Mildred queened, and that one 
of the attentive males beside her was young Gillies, 
owner of a big automobile that Sam had espied by 
the gable when he arrived. Maybe he had a mo- 
mentary doubt if Destiny, after all, had sent him up 
into these hills in entirely kindly mood. 

Yet if Destiny had sent him to Camp Henderson 
' — to be invited to this ranch — to meet Mildred 
Henderson, then perhaps it was Destiny (aware 
now of his pang) that caused the lady on his left 
at the table where he was planted to touch his 
forearm gently. She was a matronly lady of fifty, or 
thereby, whom he liked, with beautiful eyes, tender 
and shrewd, indulgent and ironic. The hand on his 
sleeve was friendly, with little wrinkles and folds. 
He liked her; he liked her gesture; it took him into 
her comfortable, hard-fought life; it made the hard- 
upness of his present state seem an accident, for 
he felt, in some ridiculous way, that she recognised 
in him the stuff that arrives at something and does 
not grow old in camps where one should only rough 
it in youth. 

“Don’t you think,” she said, in low mellow voice, 
thus drawing his head toward her to listen to the 
quiet comment, “that they are an excellent match?” 

The drift of her glance was intended to signify to 
him of whom she talked, and he looked to the table 
where Mildred sat, then back, wide-eyed, to the 
lady at his side. 


114 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Young Gillies and Nora Ray,” she amplified. 

He was so happy, after the anxiety occasioned 
by her pause, on discovery of whom it was that she 
was thus hopeful, that he responded with alacrity: 
“Yes, indeed!” 

“He’s clever. It’s not his father’s backing that 
made him, though he’s here in the valley visiting 
Mr. Gillies just now. He has the gift for seeing 
where openings are.” (Sam wished he had the gift 
too.) “He’s a delightful boy. He had a row with 
his father, you see, and went off to Sonora— at the 
end of it. It was up to him to pull through some- 
where. He told his father afterwards, when the 
row was made up, that he struck Sonora, where he 
hoped to find a fortune, with only seven dollars. 
Think of that! Seven dollars!” 

Sam opened his eyes wide, and wagged his head 
slowly, in an attempt to show astonishment. But 
the supper was drawing to an end. The folks were 
rising, ready for more reels, or poker, or gossip. 
The lady of the wrinkled hands turned to speak to 
Mrs. Henderson; and Sam, moving a step away, 
caught Mildred’s eye. Her smile brought him to 
her side. He had been very good. He had not 
thrust himself upon her. 

“It’s hot in here to-night,” she said. 

“There is a screen-porch outside, and a big ver- 
andah as well, where you could get some cool air, 
if the mosquitoes are not too bad,” he reminded 
her. 


HENDERSON’S RANCH 


115 


“It had just occurred to me,” she replied, as she 
dabbed her face with a little bunched handkerchief. 
“You arrived just in time for supper ?” Her lips 
and eyes entranced him. Her glance seemed to 
hold a private invitation as she turned; there was 
a subtle “come hither” in her pose. He drew more 
erect, debonair. 

They moved on easily out to the broad, deck-like 
verandah, Sam thrusting open the mosquito-door for 
her, but her hand on it also — a most pleasingly 
mutual business, and a pliant and pleasing hand. 

“I’ve chatted with everybody,” she said, as the 
door clicked back. “Everybody is charming here. 
They have surely given me a good time.” 

“And you them,” he answered. 

“That’s very complimentary,” said Mildred, and 
leant against the broad upright beam of the veran- 
dah roof, looking over the rolling, starlit hills. “I 
saw you talking to Mrs. Spiers.” 

“I did not know her name,” said Sam, “for we 
were not introduced. I’m glad to know it now. 
She’s very sweet. 

“You’ve fallen in love with her!” 

“She’s tremendously, and unconsciously, stimulat- 
ing,” he replied, ignoring her banter. 

“Do you need to be stimulated?” Mildred asked, 
as if astonished, turning to look at him in the light 
sprayed out from the house. 

He met her gaze and merely, as it were, surveyed 
her eyes, enquiring slightly, not utterly lost in them. 


116 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“She was telling me about young Gillies — how he 
had a row with his father, and left home to make 
good for himself, and landed in a boom town that 
was just at the bad stage beyond the real boom, and 
^before the first stability — with seven dollars!” 

“Seven dollars !” she exclaimed. 

“Seven dollars,” repeated Sam. “And now he’s 
engaged to the girl who sat beside him at your 
table.” 

“Oh-h!” said Mildred, slowly. “Oh, is he? I 
didn’t know that.” 

“Yes.” 

“Did he make it up with his father, then?” 

“No — Mrs. Spiers made a point of that. He did 
it all himself.” 

“He must have the gift,” said Mildred. 

Sam would not let his trail be travelled from. 

“What I wonder,” said he, “is this: If he pro- 
posed to the girl when he had only seven dollars or 
if he waited until the following speculations made 
good.” 

Mildred stared thoughtfully away into the pale- 
green distance where the hills were faintly lit by 
the thin moon and the big stars. 

“You’re sentimentalising about them, perhaps?” 
she suggested, her voice going up in a note of gen- 
tle interrogation. “Maybe she set her cap at him 
when he came home to see his father again, with a 
banking-account.” 

“Oh, I hope not!” cried Sam. 


HENDERSON’S RANCH 


117 


“You would like to think well of everybody.” 
This she spoke so evenly it was more of statement 
of a discovery than a question. 

“I would. And I know one person — I” — he hes- 
itated — “well,” he tried again, “I would like people 
to think well of me in that sort of way.” 

She stepped back from the verandah front and 
sank into a chair. 

“You’re thinking about yourself!” she declared. 

“Oh, no. I’m talking about Gillies and how he 
made good ’way down in Mexico!” 

“You’re making comparisons between yourself and 
Gillies!” 

Sam drew a long breath, and might have plunged 
had she not added: 

“You went into Kootenay to make good at the 
top of the boom. You’re wondering if you will 
have that boy’s luck.” 

With rapt eyes he looked down at her. She put 
up a hand and felt the coils of her dark hair. 

“For all I know you’ve had a row with your father 
too,” she said. “Why should you not do what 
Gillies has done?” 

“If I did ” he paused; “I would be happy.” 

“There is more than money in life,” she com- 
mented. 

With back against the rail, head bent, Sam gazed 
down on her. “That’s what interests me in the 
story of Gillies,” said he. “I don’t agree with you 
that the girl would ” 


118 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“I don’t say she did! I was only joshing — per- 
haps. Or maybe I was wanting to keep you from 
being more romantic than might be good for you„ 
You might come down kerflop !” 

“Yes,” he said, and smiled wryly. “But, as you 
say, there is more than the dollar side of life. I 
like you for saying that.” She was expressionless. 
“I like to think,” he went on, “that there are women 
who feel that way. It’s fine ! But life is hard.” 

“It is,” she agreed, and sighed, and he looked 
down tenderly on her; and she, glancing up, seemed 
to see and appreciate. But here was another theme 
about to draw him from his urgent and difficult trail 
of that night; and time was flying. Regarding Time, 
there were no “leaden feet” when he talked to this 
young woman, there were only “wings.” If he 
stayed out here very long with Mildred, the going 
back would perhaps make her feel uncomfortable. 
There might be glances at them — something like 
that of Mrs. Spiers at Gillies and his girl, or at 
least wondering glances. He must remember that, 
for her sake. 

“Yes,” he said, “I like to believe — I do believe — 
there are women who would be hurt if a man came 
waltzing up to them and said: Took here, I’ve 
got a business with a turnover of so-and-so, a yacht 
on the Hudson, a home in New York, a cottage in 
the Adirondacks, and 1 — well, I want you to marry 
me!’ How’s that?” 

She gave a little laugh. 


HENDERSON’S RANCH 


119 


“Oh, dear, what a lover you would make,” she 
said. “That would be a very definite proposal in- 
deed.” 

“And a woman would be right to resent it?” 

“I think so,” said Mildred Henderson. 

“But there’s the other side ” 

“You mean the man’s?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

Her hand tapped a chair beside her; and, hardly 
knowing, he sat down. There was a pause, and 
then she spoke again. 

“I believe you’re asking me” (his heart felt as if 
it had stopped) “for advice,” she said. 

“Yes,” he acknowledged, and his voice changed 
oddly. Then — “God knows,” he added. 

He saw, sitting there, the chip of moon as it 
were sailing in the sky, and he felt as though a ray 
of it had got into his head. This was not what he 
had meant to say. He was crazy. His quandary 
was that he wanted to tell her he adored her — 
without telling her, seeing that he was poor. And 
that, as Euclid might say, is an impossible proposi- 
tion. 

“My advice,” said she, “seeing you have asked 
— practically asked — now, honestly, that’s it?” 

He merely nodded, and wondered how honest he 
was. 

“Well, my advice is — don’t worry. Rustle your- 
self a job while you’re thinking of her. That’s 
what’s up to you . Don’t you think so?” 


120 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


It seemed to him that she solved the whole ques- 
tion. It seemed to him that she was wisdom incar- 
nate. Wonderful woman — wiser than Solomon ! 
Then the door opened, and some of the others came 
out, and easily she turned to speak to them. He 
was left with the wonder if she had any suspicion 
of who the She was at the back of his mind! It 
was almost as if he had managed to pull off his im- 
possible proposition, that would have baffled Euclid. 
But whether or not — the thrill of it — the romance 
of it — the magic of it! She (who was the She, 
aware or unaware) had advised. He would “rus- 
tle” that job, he would “rustle” that job — for her. 

It was not easy to say good-bye that night, for 
she was returning to Kootenay the next day. They 
were all saying good-bye together. Auto-lights were 
blazing; the girls were singing out what a joy-ride 
it would be home through the night, with the lights 
rushing ahead. Henderson brought Sam a stable 
lamp to light him back to camp. It struck the young 
man, as he took it, that when he brought it back 
next Sunday Mildred would be gone. Everybody 
was saying good-bye at once. The adieux overlapped. 
When he took her hand he could only murmur: “It 
will be queer not to see you here when I come 
again.” 

She let her hand rest a moment in his. Perhaps 
it was only that she felt very friendly toward him 
after that disclosure, or that — well that request for 
advice. 


HENDERSON’S RANCH 


121 


“I hope to hear,” said she, “that youVe rustled 

a job such as she ” and there she left it. Her 

eyes utterly enraptured him. “I’ll ask my brother 
for news of you,” she added, turning away to say 
good-bye to another guest; and big Henderson, with 
an aloof geniality, a smile that might be friendly 
or cynical or amused, was at his side again. 

“Good-night, Sam,” said Henderson. “Mind you 
come over on Sunday, or else we shall think it’s 
Mildred was the attraction and not us.” 

When Sam came to the fence-rail that night — 
which was almost told of out of place — he must 
surely have been mightily hopeful and elated, for 
he did not climb it; he did not even put a hand on 
it and vault over. He ran, he leapt, he cleared 
it at a bound, so that the lamp on his arm went out, 
and he did not trouble to relight it, but went home 
by the light of that splinter of setting moon and the 
stars. 


CHAPTER III 


A NEW-WORLD GARDEN 

SEE Sam Haig is back in town. He’s got a 
I job at the smelter to drive the tram-engine 
he tells me,” said Webley to his wife — Webley 
the one-time freight boss, who had, during Sam’s 
absence from Kootenay to study engineering on the 
steam-shovel, been created agent at Kootenay, the 
former agent having stepped into the place of the 
superintendent who had been suddenly spurned forth 
because of some omission or commission (very prob- 
ably commission) outside of this story. 

“That’s the young man who worked with you for 
a month,” said Mrs. Webley, recalling the name. 
“Will you invite him up?” 

They had been talking over who was to come to 
their garden tea, a pleasant gathering being called 
to extol and admire, and pay homage to, Webley’s 
roses, before they were clipped, the best of them, and 
sent to the Kootenay Horticultural Fair. It was 
to be a kind of private view of the flowers. Webley 
was an easy man to get along with in his “fair bun- 
galow home”- — to use the phrase of the town-boost- 
ers. He used to leave his strings of oaths at the 
freight-shed, padlock them inside every evening; and 
such cuss-words as he required at the agent’s office 
122 


A NEW-WORLD GARDEN 


123 


similarly did he leave there, though to be sure he 
found less need for vivid language as agent than as 
freight boss. There was worry still, but there was 
not sweat of the brow as well. 

“Guess I’ll ask Mathers” (Mathers, by the way 
— and you will note the possibility for the plot 
“thickening” — was the husband of Mildred Hen- 
derson’s sister, with whom Mildred dwelt when vis- 
iting Kootenay) “a|>a matter of business,” he went 
on. “Hate to mix up business and roses, but he’s 
handy; and as he’s the kind of man who looks at 
other people to see if they are handy, it’s all right.” 

Others, so far unknown to the reader, were men- 
tioned — the customs man, and his charming Cali- 
fornian wife; a doctor, big and brawny (you would 
hazard, to see him, that he never had need in all 
his life to look into the medicine chest for himself) , 
and his wife — the fit feminine for him, a woman 
who spent most of the summer in a tent with her 
children five miles down the lake, who could sing 
you a song at an evening party, or roast you a duck 
at her camp to perfection; the newspaper editor, 
slightly handicapped by a belief (and he would have 
been more tolerable could he have discarded it) 
that he had to exert a critical faculty or opinion. 
It was at times as if he carried his blue pencil 
into society, instead of leaving it on the office desk. 
There was also invited a foolish little lady who 
was wont to go to Europe every other year and 
flirt on the way, so that her little boy declared: “I 


124 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


don’t want to go to Eurup with you again. You 
leave me alone too much, and go laughing around 
with other men. It don’t seem white to pop !” — 
“Ssh ! You mustn’t speak to your mother like that !” 
She had a tendency to look tense about her subjects, 
and ask, with tensity, what one thought of Maeter- 
linck, or Bergson, or Yeats, or Butler, or Shaw, 
pr R. J. Campbell, or Maud Allan, or Strauss — or 
any other name she caught wl|en in England, and 
could look and feel exotic about. She was a flimsy 
thing; but she was invited. And there was an el- 
derly doctor who, when he met her, was wont to 
look at her heavily as she rippled her nonsense, and 
make up mild prescriptions in his mind, giving pri- 
vate thanks that his wife was what she was, not a 
worrier about distant “movements,” but a cheerful, 
ageing lady, her silver hair helped out with a switch 
t (my feminine readers may know what that is) , about 
which she made no pretence, acknowledging its false- 
ness with engaging honesty — a charming lady with 
clear eyes, and plump cheeks with roses in them 
instead of cigarette hollows. 

Sam saw all these when he responded to Webley’s 
invitation, came up hill to the fair bungalow home, 
and helped to hand — and to deplete — the store of 
sandwiches (sandwiches of cucumber and lettuce, 
sandwiches of ground nuts, salad-dressing and 
cheese), the store of cakes baked by Mrs. Webley 
and her only child, Nance, and by other ladies 
present, for each brought a cake, all being artificers 


A NEW-WORLD GARDEN 


125 


in fancy cooking. No one could be sad in this 
garden on the slope above Kootenay Lake, with the 
thin winds rustling the ranks of the roses. There 
were roses by the bushful dotting the lawn; roses 
over a pergola; rambler roses on the new palings. 
The cropped grass caused someone to tell the story 
of the American who, asking of an English gar- 
dener his recipe for an admired lawn, in that land 
of lawns and gardgis and ivied houses, was told 
to roll it, and mow it, and water it, and roll it and 
mow it and water it for about five hundred years. 
Webley commented that his lawn was a product of 
about as many days. 

Someone asked Sam what his special niche in life 
might be, and he replied (the teachings of Timpkin 
and Smith taken to mind) that he was an engineer; 
but when his questioner thereupon plunged into talk 
about bridge-building Sam dropped that he was not 
that kind of engineer, and doubted if Timpkin’s 
advice was good after all. 

“My engineering is limited to running a steam- 
shovel, ’’ he confessed. 

“Ah-ha ! Keep your thumb on it, then,” was the 
answer. “I had no suspicion. If you can bluff 
that way you ought to get on here. Hullo — here’s 
a beautiful girl arriving with Mrs. Mathers. Who’s 
she, I wonder? Younger, and still more heart-beat- 
accelerating sister, I should say! Eh?” 

Mildred had arrived. Mildred was Here ! She ad- 
vanced with her wonderful smile; and what with 


126 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


her dark, dancing eyes, and chiselled features, and 
flush among the slight powder on her cheeks (con- 
cession to the hot day), her thin, modelled lips 
(no cruelty visible here for Sam’s eyes) and her 
lustrous hair, the shadows massing into black . . . 
he broke off to admire her lilac muslin dress, and 
was caught by the whole glamour of her. 

It was the first time he had seen her since that 
evening “crush” at Henderson’s, for he had only 
come back to town yesterday, had intended to call 
upon her this very afternoon, but Webley, seeing 
him at the depot, had claimed him for the garden- 
party. How his heart beat tattoo now when he saw 
her! Surely his state was observed by the elderly 
doctor, with whom he chatted. He looked — and 
saw her as it were in the space of one heart-beat, 
from modelled neck to instep, as she strolled across 
the youthful lawn. Some of the guests she knew, 
some she knew not. To Sam she said, “You here !” 
with a pleased elevation of her eyebrows. 

“You have met before?” asked Mrs. Webley. 

“We are old friends,” answered Mildred. She 
[Was tremendously charming, radiant. Sam hoped 
it was from her heart, and not merely in superfi- 
cial graciousness, that she made that statement. 

“In that case,” Mrs. Webley said to him, “will 
you please see to Mrs. Mathers’ and Miss Hen- 
derson’s wants, and ply them with the strawberries 
while I pour tea.” 

At a private view of roses the talk can be no more 


A NEW-WORLD GARDEN 


127 


intimate than at a private view of pictures. There 
was too much chatter to please Sam. It gave con- 
fusion to his talk with Mildred when, her wants 
supplied, she sat finicking with sandwiches, twid- 
dling her little fingers over strawberries. It seemed 
to go like this: 

“I was coming to see you — yes, I like the pink 
ones — Oh no, I only arrived yesterday — there is a 
beauty over there; it will surely get a prize — why 
have I come back? — because the work is finished 
there, and I wanted to come back where — the dark 
purple ones are wonderful — a credit to Koote- 
nay.” 

Webley, pointing out some special favourites 
among the blooms, led the way to the top of his 
garden, and suddenly stretching up on tiptoe said, 
over the flower-tops and fence-tops: “Hullo! What 
are you doing there?” 

A voice came unintelligibly to the others from 
the far side. 

“Well, come in — come in here,” Webley invited. 
“Come up that way — to the top, and slip in at the 
wicket.” He turned back to his guests, releasing him- 
self from the prickly clutch of a thorn. “It’s my 
neighbour, Marsden,” he explained. 

“Oh, Marsden!” said one or two. 

“I didn’t know he was a settler,” remarked the 
big doctor, looking at his wife as over some private 
joke. 

“I always say we’re married but not settled,” she 


128 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


explained. “Most married folks are married and 
settled!” 

“Settled — settled, by Jehoshaphat !” the doctor 
declared. 

“He’s not,” said Webley. “Marsden is neither. 
It’s just his notion to build a house.” 

“It’s a very nice residence,” said Mildred Hen- 
derson, who, having finished her refreshment was 
strolling round with Sam. 

“It is,” agreed Webley. “Why shouldn’t he have 
a house and a garden of his own, he says, to loaf 
in, when he’s not working, instead of only a hotel 
rotunda? Here he comes.” 

When Sam was introduced he met Marsden’s eyes 
fully, and both men came to the same decision — 
to acknowledge that strained meeting on the 
mountain wagon-road. 

“We have met before,” they said simultaneously, 
and shook hands. 

“There are still some things left to eat,” said 
Webley. “Here you are, Marsden — have a snack 
at this table.” 

“I’ll get some fresh tea,” said Nance, and ran 
off across the lawn, silver teapot in hand, Marsden 
calling after her not to trouble, for the Marsdens 
don’t take kindly to afternoon tea. Never ask a 
man like Marsden if he has ever partaken of after- 
noon tea; for, if he has, you are merely putting be- 
fore him one of the biggest temptations to lie prompt- 
ly and vigorously that it is possible to put before 


A NEW-WORLD GARDEN 


129 


man. He looked now as one horribly trapped. 

“That’s all right,” he called out, but Webley was 
determined to be neighbourly, whether Marsden 
cared for tea in a garden or looked upon it as an ef- 
fete introduction from the old mother island, insidi- 
ously drifting across the American continent. A 
canful in a camp after a day on the trail is another 
matter. 

The guests walked about, or sat down, as they 
were minded. They talked shop — or rather they 
talked horticultural fairs. They expressed their 
opinion on the trick of labelling fruit one had not 
grown, but purchased on purpose, with the name of 
one’s own ranch. A bobolink, frisking into their 
midst, and forth again with a start, caused them 
to speak of a book called Little Girl-Bird in the Pop- 
pies y and some one wondered if there would be a se- 
quel called The Little Boy-Bird in the Oats. 

Over in a corner an old-timer whispered the true 
story of how MacPherson came to own the Atlin 
mine, and those who listened murmured “Careful! 
Careful!” when he reached the bit about: “ . . . 

so he pulled his gun, and said, ‘You son of a ’ ! 

. . . ” Marsden was telling Mrs. Mathers and Mil- 
dred all about the new motor-boats. He had just 
bought one; it would be the first on the lake. De- 
serted by Mildred, Sam was taken over by Nance 
Webley, a simple and somehow, pictorially, early- 
Victorian-looking little lady, with the most candid 
eyes you could wish to see. Finding Sam as if “out 


130 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


of it” she inveigled him into conversation with the 
old-timer and his wife, who whispered: “Do remem- 
ber, Tom, when you tell that story about MacPher- 
son to leave out the son of a you know expression.” 
And just when they were beginning to fall into 
groups to talk about what interested them it was time 
to go. 

“Don’t hurry off,” said Webley to Sam. “You 
wait. I want to hear how you’re making out.” 

So Sam (entirely willing) stayed on; he bowed 
farewells where bows were offered, shook hands 
when hands were extended, and watched the party 
ebb away. Nance Webley, in these last moments, 
had been talking to him again ; and in the circulation 
of adieux, between attention to what she said, and 
dread of not holding Mildred’s hand for at least 
one fugitive second, of not looking in her eyes again, 
to search nimbly for some flicker of friendship, he 
was almost distraught. 

“Good-bye, Mr. Haig,” she called, and smiled, 
and nodded from a distance. 

The expression was cryptic to him. As Nance 
turned to shake hands with the old-timer and his 
wife Sam hastened to Mildred’s side. 

“Good-bye,” he said. “May I call ” 

“Will you be there on Saturday?” she asked. 

“There?” enquired Sam, puzzled. 

“Didn’t you hear? You were so engrossed on 
something else that you lost the invitation,” and 
her eyes flashed — flashed and smiled. There were 


A NEW-WORLD GARDEN 


131 


moments when he wondered if she had Latin blood 
in her veins ! A little red gleam would show in those 
velvety pupils. But what the invitation was that 
he had missed she did not say, swirled lissom away 
with a last distracting glance over her shoulder. He 
tried to call after her, or rather he tried to collect 
some words to call after her. “Where is there?” 
came to his lips, but sounded absurd. “Where is 

there? What invitation did I lose? What ” 

While he was trying to find words and voice she, 
who so ridiculously perturbed him, was gone. 


CHAPTER IV 


MARSDEN EXPLAINS HIS ACTIONS 

W HEN Sam found himself alone in the gar- 
den with neighbour Marsden and Nance 
Webley, and the crumbs of the feast, and 
the scattered cups, in the interval of waiting for 
the return of Mrs. Webley from the house, and of 
Webley from the front door, he had a troubled ex- 
pression in his eyes. Marsden strolled a few paces 
back and forth. 

“You have a nice home here, Miss Webley,” he 
announced, “nice home. Good location. Oh yes.” 

Then he fixed his cold eyes on Sam, and, head on 
side, gloomed upon him. Nance did not know what 
to say, for Marsden seemed preoccupied, and Haig 
comatose. A cigarette-box on one of the garden 
tables suggested means whereby to resuscitate. 
“Won’t you smoke, Mr. Haig?” said she. 
Between the abstracting of the cigarette from 
the box and the blowing of the first smoke, Sam, 
with an effort, brought his gaze back from a kind of 
wraith of Mildren Henderson and became really 
present. Then Webley joined them, also took a 
cigarette, lit up, dragged a chair toward Sam, and 
throwing himself into another said: “Well, squat 
132 


MARSDEN EXPLAINS HIS ACTIONS 133 


down, Haig, and give me your news. Camp, Mars- 
den, camp — and have a cigar.” 

Thus relieved, Nance turned to the tables, and 
would allow none of the men to aid her in clearing 
away the litter and remnants of the repast. Sam 
carried one trayload into the scullery; Marsden fol- 
lowed with hands full of plates in a kind of cumber- 
some but clever balancing feat; but Nance said she’d 
be really downright annoyed if they did any more. 
So they drew their chairs closer, blew occasional 
smoke, and Webley demanded that his younger 
guest should tell how things were “panning out” 
with him. 

Here were new surroundings to Sam. He had 
seen the hotel life of Kootenay, for a night on his 
arrival; the boarding-house life for several weeks 
he had known; camp life he had sampled of late, 
and also tasted a little of ranch life at the home of 
Mildred’s brother. Very clear to him still was 
the construction camp. His ears had not yet for- 
gotten the coughing and chugging off the steam- 
shovel; the smell of the turned earth was still with 
him; and here he was in a scented garden, the gar- 
den of a real home. It was peaceful, tranquil — 
high on the slopes, the garden of one of the highest- 
set houses. Beyond it, among the bush, stood a 
shack or two, elbowing stove-pipe upthrust. Away 
up yonder, to South and West, the rolls of the 
mountains urged backwards toward the crest (a dun 
blue under the sky, a dun blue serrated cliff sug- 


134 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


gestive of profound quiet, elemental peace and 
strength), that crest under which the Fraser miners 
toiled, while beyond, visible from the big, padded 
cane chair in which he sat, was the spur where the 
Lanyon miners burrowed and blasted, its topmost 
peak seeming to peer over the other ridges upon 
them, a sparkling blue, lit by the sun. Past the cor- 
ner of the house, far below, he could see the sky- 
mirroring arm of the Lake. Little breezes ruffled 
the roses, and fluttered the tobacco smoke. Nance 
Webley drifted to and fro, tidying up, and her 
father’s eyes followed her with content. 

“You two have met before, then,” he said, trying 
a new theme, for Sam seemed restrained regarding 
his work, and how things were “panning out.” 

“We have surely,” answered Marsden. 

“Yes,” said Sam. “I was coming down the moun- 
tain one day and met Mr. Marsden leading a lame 
horse.” 

“And I sized him up as looking for a job,” 
continued Marsden, “and asked him to lead it home 
for a dollar* — seeing he was going down any- 
how.” 

Webley glanced leisurely, but interestedly, from 
one to the other. 

“What,” he enquired, “is the story?” 

“He didn’t like my tone,” said Marsden, and 
smiled on Sam in a fashion that seemed meant for 
genial. 

“Oh, I don’t know that there is anything to be 


MARSDEN EXPLAINS HIS ACTIONS 135 


revealed about It,” declared Sam. “Put it that I 
hadn’t met Mr. Marsden before, and was new to 
the West. For all I could tell it might be quite a 
usual proceeding, in the West, to ask a total stranger 
to relieve one of a horse, and take it home — for a 
dollar.” 

“Dignified!” said Marsden. “I tell you he was 
surely dignified!” This he commented to Webley, 
who again looked from one to the other with roving 
and non-committal gaze. Marsden seemed friendly, 
yet Sam was uncertain of him, even meeting him 
thus in the home of a common friend. 

“Why didn’t you flag me for a job that day?” 
asked Marsden, jerking out the question abruptly, 
his eyes like gimlets on Haig — who frankly met the 
scrutiny, mouth corners puckering in the slightest 
smile. 

“You heard when you got to the mine, then, that 
I’d been advised to flag you?” he suggested. 

“Yes. What was the trouble anyhow? You had 
every chance. It wasn’t as if we passed each other 
with more than a nod.” 

Webley, who had gathered sufficient of the inci- 
dent from their remarks, broke in laughing: “Mars- 
den wants to know,” and he wagged his head at his 
neighbour, “why in thunder Sam Haig,” and he 
wagged his head at his other guest, “didn’t like the 
look of him.” 

Marsden gave a low gruff chuckle, and changed his 
attitude, one might say his attitudes, mental and 


136 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


physical; for with a big motion he took a new and 
easier posture in his chair and 

“I was only thinking,” said he, “that Mr. Haig 
must have been pretty near broke then — sort of 
clinging on to his dignity seeing that his dollars 
were evaporating — didn’t want to be without both.” 
Then his chin went on his chest and under his brows 
he gloomed in a way typical of him. “There are 
men in this town,” he went on, addressing his host, 
“ — we don’t need to mention names — who have such 
a jag of dollars that they don’t bother about dig- 
nity. They’ll take another odd dollar and toss it 
on top of the pile, as readily as Mr. Haig turned 
down my offer” (he paused), “and the man that 
offered it too,” he added. “I admit”- — he turned to 
Sam — “that I made a mistake about you. I thought 
you were an all-brain man, by the look of you at 
first. I didn’t know you understood horses, for one 
thing.” 

“You don’t know that yet!” replied Sam. 

“Oh yes I do! I knew the moment you took 
the lines from me and turned that lame horse around. 
I don’t need any more indication than that,” and 
he nodded. 

“All very well,” thought Sam, “for him to chatter 
thus”; but he recalled, as if it had been said only 
the day before, that “Say, do you want to make a 
dollar?” And he resented it still. He could have 
reminded Marsden of the exact words and asked 
him, directly, if he thought that was the way to ac- 


MARSDEN EXPLAINS HIS ACTIONS 137 


cost a stranger by the roadside; but he did not — 
seeing that they had foregathered here in a friend’s 
house, and the amenities had to be considered. 

Webley, head on hand, elbow on chair-arm, gave 
a little sigh. 

“Clearly you have met before,” said he, then 
added: “It’s good you have this opportunity of 
coming to an understanding.” 

To that neither responded. There was a spell 
of quiet. Marsden slew a mosquito with a clap on 
the back of his hand; Sam drew hard on his pipe, 
which he had produced when the cigarette was fin- 
ished, and blew smoke at a persistent wasp that 
balanced before him like a small winged battering- 
ram. 

“It’s a hard world,” remarked Marsden at 
length. “It’s a hard proposition of a world. A 
man has to be awake to it. Frills are of little use. 

Kindly sentiments are all very well ” he waved 

his hand to bring into the discussion the many-hued 
roses. “Flowers !” he ejaculated. “All right I But 
they come out of this,” and he tapped the ground 
with his foot. 

“There’s good green grass on that,” said Webley. 

“True. But if there wasn’t rock somewhere be- 
low you wouldn’t be here long. You’d have a moun- 
tain of mud. No, sir! Life is no How-do-you-do? 
Glad-to-see-you. We’re-all-friends-here proposition. 
Life’s hard.” 

Perhaps these comments, by way of metaphorical 


138 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


or symbolistic, were intended by Marsden as expla- 
nation to Sam of his brusquerie that day on the 
wagon-road. At any rate, with an effort toward 
broad-mindedness, Sam considered them so; and be- 
thought him that, if these were the man’s views, 
here was unbending indeed. 

All rose then, for Mrs. Webley came out, turning 
and calling to Nance to follow when she could. But 
she was not a woman who asked men to change their 
conversation when she joined them, to go on parade. 

“Do be seated again,” she begged, and herself 
sitting down, enquired: “What is the pow-wow?” 

“Marsden was telling Haig,” her husband eluci- 
dated, “or warning him — it sounded grim enough for 
a warning — that the world is a stiff proposition, and 
that the lambs and the lions don’t lie down together.” 

“Not by a long way !” murmured Marsden. “No, 
they don’t lie down together by a long way 1” 

“What is that stanza about the good old rule, the 
simple plan?” Mrs. Webley enquired, looking from 
one to another, and Sam supplied it : 

“The good old rule 
Sufficeth them, the simple plan, 

That hey should take who have the power ” 

“That’s right!” cried Marsden. 

“And they should keep who can!” 

Sam finished in a dry voice, after allowing a pause 
to follow the other’s appreciation. He spoke the 
denouement directly at him, too. 


MARSDEN EXPLAINS HIS ACTIONS 139 


The picture presented to Nance, coming across 
the lawn to join them at that juncture, was arresting. 
Sam had his head up, and there was a hint of the 
combative about him. Mrs. Webley was not aware 
of it. Webley noted, at least, that slight suggestive 
of, if not enmity, preparation to attack enmity. He 
was more sure now that a suspicion drifting in upon 
him (like a waveless tide) had reason with it. Or 
perhaps he should not call it a suspicion. We often 
say we feel when really we have observed . And he 
had the evidence thrust upon him. There was some- 
thing, as they say, in that meeting of Sam and Mars- 
den on the wagon-road; and there leapt up before 
Webley memory of glances he had seen Marsden 
cast upon Haig when the latter was talking to Mil- 
dred Henderson. 

He had, it seemed, not searched out the woman 
in the case, but had had her indicated to him. And, 
of course, feeling himself so astute, he surmised 
that there was a meeting before the one on the wagon- 
road to which neither referred — and was wrong. 
However — that’s often the way suspicions affect peo- 
ple; they are clever — and a shade too clever. It 
was moreover, Webley considered, none of his affair. 
He changed the position of his long legs, and dis- 
missed the whole matter as nothing to do with him; 
though to be sure he was interested, in “the proper 
study of mankind is man” sort of way. Nance far- 
ther helped in the dismissal by now announcing that 
supper was ready. 


140 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


Lighter themes than Marsden’s opinion of life 
occupied them during the meal; and after supper 
Nance played, so that the close of the evening had 
the bloom on it that music loved for its own sake 
gives. Sam, as he listened, was like another musi- 
cal instrument himself, played on by the playing; all 
sorts of dreams and plans accompanied the rippling 
of the notes. 


CHAPTER M 


A TRIP UP THE LAKE 

I T was at the moment of departure that Sam had 
the meanfing of Mildred’s parting speech ex- 
plained to him. 

“We will see you on Saturday, then?” said Web- 
ley, on the front porch with his guests, his tone sug- 
gesting that this was a reminder of an earlier ar- 
rangement. 

“Saturday?” asked Sam, at a loss. 

“Yes — the motor-boat trip,” explained Webley. 
“Didn’t you hear Mr. Marsden invite us all for a 
trip in his new boat?” 

“Oh! I heard something — I didn’t catch ” 

“Yes,” said Webley. “Mr. Marsden wants all 
our guests of to-day to be at the jetty on Saturday. 
That’s it, isn’t it, Marsden?” 

Marsden inclined his head. 

“Very kind indeed,” said Sam. “Delighted.” 
He had a belief that Marsden had not really in- 
vited him, that Webley was extending the invitation 
— a proxy, without full authority. He certainly had 
not heard the invitation — doubted if it had been 
intended for his ears — doubted if he should not, 
instead of saying “Delighted,” be saying: “But I 
141 


142 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


don’t think Mr. Marsden made it as general as all 
that.” He was almost certain that he was allowing 
himself to be thrust upon Marsden for the boat- 
trip — but to see Mildred he allowed himself to be 
what the normal Sam Haig would have called “a 
kind of mean cuss.” But Marsden, so he excused 
himself, was so queer a dry stick of a man that he 
could not make certain of him. He just might have 
intended to include Sam. Yet he was certainly not 
demonstrative in agreeing that he had included Sam ! 
So thought that young man, and then — “You know 
the jetty?” asked Marsden. “Just to the east of the 
stern-wheeler wharf.” 

It struck him that Marsden, preacher of the view 
of the hardness of the world, would not be hocussed 
into inviting a man he didn’t want; for Sam held no 
theory regarding the discrepancy between the aver- 
age man’s creed and his life. 

“Oh yes,” replied Sam, glad that the host of that 
prospective trip did at last speak. 

“I hope they all turn up,” said Webley. “Very 
good of you to ask them.” 

In his anxiety to see Mildred, Sam fretted next 
day. Should he ring her up to ask if she had meant 
that he was to call at her home on Saturday, or if her 
meaning, in reference to that day, was that she would 
see him with the motor-boat trippers? Had she 
heard the invitation which he had not heard? After 
having his hair cut on Friday morning he stood be- 
mused, considering the telephone-box in the barber’s, 


A TRIP UP THE LAKE 


143 


getting into a panic lest, by joining the others, he 
should offend her; lest, on the other hand, if he 
called at her home on Saturday he would find she 
was gone down the lake. There was no doubt that 
Mildred Henderson had an upsetting influence on 
him. This vacillation before the telephone-box was 
but symptomatic of his condition. No, he would not 
telephone to her ; he would not let her know what a 
flutter and uncertainty he was in ! But after dinner 
at Timpkin’s (for he had returned there, for bed and 
board, on his return to town, no cut-rater this time) 
he stepped over to the telephone at the rear of the 
entrance passage. The Chinaman, Sing, was passing. 

“You got telephone book, Sing?” he asked. 

“Ohhhh!” moaned Sing, and shook his head, 
beaming. 

“You catchum tel-e-phone book? You savvey 
tel-e-phone book?” 

“No savvey. I ask Missatim.” 

Timpkin, summoned by Sing, explained that the 
telephone had been disconnected in the cut-rate pe- 
riod that hadn’t worked, and now — he shrugged 
his shoulders — now he put off getting connected 
again, for he had his eye on another house, a real 
hotel, with a licence, booze — nothing like booze to 
make money; these tarnation drunkards would cut- 
rate in everything except booze. Mrs. Timpkin 
didn’t like the notion, feared that the purveying of 
booze would recoil on his own head, that he might 
turn into a drunkard. Shucks! But all the same a 


144 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


man couldn’t make a living off beds and meals; they 
ate so much! No — no telephone. 

Sam left it at that, as though in the hands of fate, 
and tried to settle for the evening with a book. His 
post at the smelter-bucket engine he was not to take 
over for a day or two. He wondered if his restless- 
ness was due to workless days and to the looking 
forward to a new employment. Perhaps that was it ! 
Over the book he wondered if he should call upon 
Mildred that night, seeing the telephone was cut off, 
and thus make sure about the morrow. No, that 
wouldn’t do. She had said something about Satur- 
day. To call would be more stupid than to telephone. 
How would it do to stroll along Dawson Street in 
the morning and look down between the houses there 
(he knew a gap where the lake-side jetty could be 
glimpsed) to see if Mildred was of the party? If 
she was there he would go down; if she was not he 
would turn back. But that smacked of meanness, 
paltriness, of spying on his host and on those who 
might be his fellow-guests. Besides, he might be 
seen by them, as well as seeing them. Then he would 
look a fool! 

Oh, Jehoshaphat! What a tendency to quandary 
this ravishing beauty brought him. How the spell 
often fogged initiative ! Perhaps it would be better to 
go down early in the morning to the jetty, make him- 
self agreeable to Marsden and the others; and if she 
did not come he could plead sudden indisposition at 
the last moment. Oh no ! That would be childish ! 


A TRIP UP THE LAKE 


145 


Besides, Marsden would peer at him with those cold 
eyes. Did her “Will you be there on Saturday ?” 
imply that they would meet there? Or did it mean : 
“Come on Saturday if you are not going. I’m not”? 

He wished he had heard the original invitation 
in Webley’s garden — not now to know if he had 
been invited, but if Mildred was going. His brain 
was turned into a sort of juggling contraption. He 
was in a condition that makes one understand the 
phrase: “So-and-so is crazy about that girl!” In 
the event, when Saturday came, some sane part of 
him took care of the insane parts, groomed him, 
clothed him, carried him down to the jetty in decent 
time — and there they were all coming from their 
homes, all the gay guests, and there was the rig from 
the cafe, laden with luncheon baskets. Marsden, 
genial, yet grim as ever, saluted them from the stern 
of his craft, where he was oiling and cleaning against 
any possibility of hitch. Most of those who had been 
at Webley’s rose-view were here now, shaking hands, 
laughing, chattering, very buoyant in the airy morn- 
ing. And suddenly, as if out of nowhere, there was 
Mildred, in an enthralling arrangement of voile, 
glinting at him in the most intoxicating way. “We 
know each other,” her glance seemed to say. 
“We need not shake hands. We are old friends. We 
have been confidential.” 

“All aboard! All aboard!” hailed Marsden with 
heavy geniality, and in a few seconds they were set- 
tled on the divans that ran round the nattily fitted 


146 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


hull, and in the deck chairs. Then they were off, the 
trig craft chugging down the lake, disturbing the re- 
flections of the mountains, as happy a pleasure-party 
as one could wish to see, under the tasselled awn- 
ing. 

To those in the boat who did not trouble, but took 
everything for granted, nothing was afoot except a 
picnic. They were in mood for light talk, banter, 
persiflage. But much was happening — if only they 
had known. There was an expression, to Sam’s mind, 
on the face of their entertainer, like that a man wears 
when he has taken the first trick, and believes he can 
take the next. A fine big man, for physique, was 
Jack Marsden. But Sam, although highly apprecia- 
tive of thew and physique, saw something distaste- 
ful in this man’s force and weight. He resented 
Marsden’s thew; he resented the way he carried him- 
self. While chatting to those beside him, Sam had 
an eye, ever and again, for his host. He noted that 
Marsden had given Mrs. Mathers a chair on his left, 
where he could talk to her while steering and watch- 
ing the engine; and he was suspicious of Marsden’s 
intentions. 

There! It was what he thought! Sam’s eyes 
wavered; his attention was distracted from his imme- 
diate acquaintances; for Mrs. Mathers turned to 
Mildred as if for her view upon something she and 
Marsden discussed, and Mildred was drawn into the 
conversation. But anon the vacillating young man 
thought that perhaps he misjudged; for Mildred 


A TRIP UP THE LAKE 


147 


dropped out again from that conference, and re- 
turned to her smiling contemplation of the wake that 
fanned out clean-cut behind them. 

Sam would have looked much like a setter dog in 
the boat had not Mrs. Webley engaged him in talk. 
He had to change his seat, nearer to her, to hear 
what she said, above the chug of the motor. It was 
during a lull in that conversation that he noticed Mil- 
dred (to whom his eyes frequently drifted) smile 
across to little Nance, a most friendly smile. And no 
sooner had she looked away again than Nance dived 
to her mother’s side. 

“I do wish I was as tall as Miss Henderson,” 
quoth she. 

“You’re not a stub!” Mrs. Webley declared, clap- 
ping her daughter’s shoulder. 

Again the glances of Mildred and Nance met, 
and the ingenuous Nance had to exclaim: “I was just 
saying I wish I was as tall as you.” 

“That’s very nice of you,” replied Mildred, who, 
though for her part she had no desire to shrink, 
would have been horror-stricken had she overheard 
the sudden exchange of opinion between Webley and 
his wife. 

Said Mrs. Webley: “Did you hear that? Nance 
says she wishes she was as tall as Miss Henderson.” 

“As long and lank, did you say?” he muttered. 

“Miss Henderson is a very pretty woman,” said 
Mrs. Webley. “You can’t say she’s not pretty.” 

Webley merely said nothing. 


148 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“You wouldn’t say she’s not pretty,” persisted his 
wife. 

“Neither would she !” he responded. 

“She’s a very pretty woman,” said Mrs. Webley. 

All the women said so, among themselves, some 
time or another during the trip. Mildred, indeed, 
was radiant — radiant in the trig boat, radiant when, 
on a strip of sunny shingle beyond Five Mile Point, 
they all went ashore, and the men built a fire, and laid 
out a cloth with a stone on each corner to hold it 
down. All gave thanks for the refreshing breeze, 
and while the women set out the contents of the 
luncheon baskets Marsden was complimented on his 
boat and his enterprise. 

“No more canoe for me 1” said the customs man. 
“What! Paddle down here on a hot day when you 
can be squirted along like that ! Pm for the life of 
ease.” 

“And softness?” asked Marsden. 

“I’ll risk that,” was the reply. 

Sam, at this, expected Marsden to let himself 
loose again upon a dissertation on the hardness of 
things, but Marsden did not. That was the nearest 
approach (that “And softness?”) to his creed, or 
obsession. The lake rippled gently, the sun shone 
out, the smell of the forests was all round them. 
They laughed and were merry over the jesting noth- 
ings that make such picnics pleasanter than deep 
seances where opinions clash. The fir-tops peeped 
over, and high and glittering, amethyst and silver, 


A TRIP UP THE LAKE 


149 


with rock ridge and snow-fissure, the peaks stood ma- 
jestic under cloudless sky. By the time the flies 
sought them out the repast was far enough advanced 
for the men to smoke and drive them away. 

“That’s easier than making a smudge of the fire,” 
said Marsden, handing round cigars. 

The word “smudge” set the men a-going with 
stories of their travels — travellers all — and all well- 
stocked with mosquito yarns. It was just a sunny 
(yea, a flippant) picnic; it was a relaxation from 
dollar-hunting for folks who could remember their 
childhood, and who welcomed a day of letting the 
chink of golden eagles and the rustle of bills go un- 
heeded. 

To Sam it was an ordeal. Soon he would be 
earning ninety dollars a month; but the man who 
had given him this outing was not of the order of 
man to buy a motor-boat on his capital and rely on 
the odd dollars of current income for gasolene. He 
had a bank-balance. He had already “made good.” 
Further — Sam, himself infatuated, knew the symp- 
toms that showed upon Jack Marsden. He had ob- 
served that his host did not invite Mildred to sit be- 
side him in the boat; but here, where they all grouped 
round the cloth, it struck him that Marsden did too 
greatly show his admiration. It seemed that there 
was occasional appropriation in his manner. Sam 
shuddered inwardly, and swung to the other extreme. 
If some plates were empty, and one of these be- 
longed to Mildred, it was to the others he attended 


150 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


first. He was almost offhand, by comparison, when 
he attended to her. And she, glancing up at him, 
smiled with understanding. If this was Love, then 
Love was truly a malady. If this was Love, then 
Love endowed him with a sense of subtleties that 
begat agony. He felt as if Mildred had gone far 
from him. He wondered, agonisingly, if there had 
been, on her side, any personal hint of at least some- 
thing in the nature of caring for him (“Wow!” that 
was how he felt! — Tangled, stupefied, turned into a 
flushed idiot) when she gave advice to him, up at 
Henderson’s, to “rustle” a good job in the first in- 
stance, and then wait and see how Fortune played 
in the matter of the nameless lady whose existence 
he had confessed to her. Had she a suspicion re- 
garding the She of his distraction? Surely at any 
rate a suspicion! Had she known? 

On the way back to Kootenay, in the last of the 
day, through deep purple and green waters, with 
the mountains casting awesome black shadows down 
into the depths, instead of launching their tranquil 
and sunlit and blue-shadowed reflections, he thought 
that perhaps she made no attempt to chat with him 
on this occasion because of the same reasons that 
had made him attend to her last, instead of first, 
when playing waiter. But that was impossible ; that 
was to credit himself with gifts of casting a spell, 
to flatter himself that his feelings were reciprocated 
— and deeply. He took advantage of the dusk, un- 
der the awning, to give her more than a casual 


A TRIP UP THE LAKE 


151 


glance, to look long and admiring at her ivory pro- 
file, to note her graceful pose where she sat sil- 
houetted between thwart and awning’s edge, against 
the deep waters that they flurried through; and as 
he looked she turned her head slowly. 

He sat motionless, head on hand, gazing at her, 
and in her eyes, when they met his in that dusk, 
he read understanding — at least understanding of 
his, shall we say plight? With as great delibera- 
tion as she had turned her gaze on him she slowly 
moved her eyes away again. 

They came back to the jetty where lights were 
already being lit and sending down long waving 
and twining golden reflections into the water that 
still held a last glow of day. It was an exquisite 
hour. In the churning of the water as they drew 
to shore the reflected lights fell into loose rings 
that joined like chain-mail, and parted and were 
broken and formed again. The boat was moored, 
the party clustered ashore, and then (when their 
host had made all snug) they strolled toward town, 
detachments dropping off at each corner with final 
thanks to Marsden for the day’s outing. It would 
have been presumptuous, as things were, for Sam 
to fasten himself on to Mildred; or so he decided, 
trudging up-hill looking pleasant in a sociable sort 
of way, but deeply occupied in his own private story. 
Marsden was their host — and Marsden had over 
his arm the rug that Mrs. Mathers had brought 
with her lest the homeward run at night might prove 


152 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


chilly. Sam was carrying the luncheon-baskets. He 
had eagerly offered to carry them, ostensibly in a 
gracious mood, but really so as to have excuse to 
walk along with Marsden, Mrs. Mathers, and Mil- 
dred — with a stress upon the “and” — who (if only 
by the fact that Marsden had taken Mrs. Mathers’ 
rug over his arm) were evidently going up-hill to- 
gether. When they reached Dawson Street Mrs. 
Mathers held out her hand to Marsden for the 
rug. 

“We go along Astley Street,” she said. 

“That’s all right,” replied Marsden. “I’ll walk 
up there with you — it’s not much out of my way.” 

There seemed nothing for Sam to say, seeing 
Marsden had evidently forgotten the baskets, but: 
“Shall I leave the baskets at the cafe, then, Mr. 
Marsden?” He expected Marsden to say: “Oh 
I forgot! I can’t have a guest carrying that load 
to the cafe for me.” What Marsden did say was: 

“Oh, the baskets! Say — well, that’s very good 
of you, Mr. Haig, seeing you’re going that way 
anyhow.” 

Sam wanted to answer: “Confound you, I’m 
not going that way!” But Mildred, and Mrs. 
Mathers, and Mr. and Mrs.' — I think the name was 
Johns (who would leave the others a block on this 
side of the Mathers’ home) were ready to move 
on. So Sam just said good-night to all in a series 
of beams and bows — “and thank you for the trip, 
Mr. Marsden,” — and off he trudged alone along 


A TRIP UP THE LAKE 


1 53 


Dawson Street to the cafe where Marsden had pro- 
cured the lunch, an empty basket under one arm, 
and under the other a full one laden with dirty 
dishes. 

Alone on Dawson Street (labouring in the direc- 
tion of a projecting lit sign that announced : “Koote- 
nay Cafe — Soda Fountain — Iced Drinks”) he woe- 
fully considered to himself: “A fine end to this 
day! Now I’m the baggage-man! That’s what 
I am!” 


CHAPTER VI 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 

F LY day — hasten night! Roll on, Phaethon- 
wheel. Aurora and the rest of them, in 
Meredithian maze and high-falutin, get a 
move on! Thus felt Sam, wondering when he should 
see her again. It was a seven days a week job 
he went to now, and an oily one. He could not 
be washed and fed and free for social life before 
eighty-thirty in the evening. No more pleasure- 
trips on the lake! No more sunny afternoons in 
her presence ! But to work was the ideal — to work 
for her. The advice she had given him, at Hen- 
derson’s ranch, to rustle a good job, he recalled — 
or rather he never forgot. On forty-five dollars a 
month in town who could save? On sixty a month 
in that railroad construction camp beyond reach 
of the lure of the stores, he had been able to lay 
aside a few dollars; and now, on ninety a month, 
even in town, he would save more. After the first 
hundred or two dollars were gathered — thus did he 
build his castle in Spain — he could invest. These 
thoughts took him daily to work, and gave rhythm 
to his task. 

On a Sunday morning, shortly before lunch-tirne, 
154 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 


155 


when he had been at the tram-engine a week, the 
“tipper” (he who emptied the buckets) dipped his 
hand into one that came sailing forward on the 
wire, an apparently empty one that followed a laden 
sequence, and took out a note at which he glanced; 
then he handed it to Sam through the open window 
of the engine-room. 

“Last for to-day,” the paper announced. 

So Sam shut off and strolled over to the office 
to enter the morning’s tally. On the way thither 
he encountered the chief, who told him: “You 
may as well knock off, then.” In his flimsy engi- 
neer’s coat, blue dungarees, black-faced and business- 
like, he went gaily home — an eyesore to the church- 
goers. They blocked his way, and he made no 
more than one attempt to get passage on the side- 
walk, or thrust his way through, but accepted the 
inference of the heinousness of his state in contrast 
with theirs, stepped into the road, and trudged along 
homeward in the dust. 

It was a relief to come to non-sectarian, irrelig- 
ious Dawson Street, where were the loungers and 
cigar-smokers for whom the conflicting churchbells 
tinkled in vain. Their objection to Sunday labour 
was physical — “A man can’t do it month in and 
month out. He wants a long holiday every quar- 
ter, working like that; so he may as well have one 
day a week instead.” If they noted Sam specially 
they would consider that there went a man who 
would need a rest sooner or later, not that there 


156 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


went a man whom the Deity advised them to evil- 
eye. 

In a great bath to rearward of one of the barbers’ 
“joints” he plunged and blew and refreshed; and in 
the afternoon went to call on Mildred whose ad- 
dress he had discovered from her brother before leav- 
ing the construction camp. Arrived at her home he 
was told she had gone for a walk. 

“Gone long?” he enquired. 

“About ten minutes.” 

He realised that had she gone down-hill he would 
surely have met her, so he walked on upward, in 
the direction of that road on which he had trudged, 
exploring, on the day following his arrival in the 
city. Recalling his way of crediting Destiny with 
interest in him, it does not surprise to know that 
he thanked Destiny when he descried Mildred stroll- 
ing (with her slow, lingering swing) upon the sun- 
lit and dusty road beyond the last houses, backed 
by the russet wall of the pine and fir wood. He 
hastened his steps to make up on her, but she stopped 
at the first bend, and there halting and turning about 
— as though to take easy breath and consider the 
view — saw him advancing. She was most radiant 
in her greeting; there seemed no mockery ambushed 
in her eyes as she waited for him. 

“I called at your home,” he said, “and was told 
you had gone for a walk.” 

“A lonely walk!” she exclaimed. “I just had to 
stop here. It doesn’t entice me; it looks so deso- 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 


157 


late out of the sun in that bit of wood. I hate 
coming all alone up to that card on the tree with 
Test House’ on it. And there’s no one above for 
miles and miles.” 

“Only the Chinamen,” said Sam. 

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “of course,” and her brows 
arched. “I’ve heard of them. I tell you what I 
would just love, Mr. Haig — I would just love to 
see their farms, but I wouldn’t' like to go alone.” 

“Let me take you,” he promptly offered — and 
in her glance was no rebuff to the excess of his 
eagerness. 

“Thank you,” she accepted. “I’ve heard that they 
run about like rats, tending their fields. I believe 
it would scare me to find myself up there all alone. 
Ever since I read a story of a girl who was kid- 
napped in ’Cisco I feel sort of frightened of some- 
thing about a Chink.” 

“Was that a story by Frank Norris?” he asked, 
as they walked on. 

“Oh, don’t ask me!” cried Mildred. “I never 
remember names of authors!” 

They passed into the wood’s shadow. 

“It’s interesting,” said Sam, presently. “They 
can raise things anywhere. I went up there once 
with an Englishman I worked with when I first 
came to Kootenay; he had been all over the world, 

and he had seen Chinamen where they grow ” 

i “By the bushel-full, I should think,” she re- 
marked. “They always look as if they swarmed 


158 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


like bees when one sees them together — always make 
me think of bees, or ants.” 

The mere man in him had the sense of paladin, 
or protector, as he led the way up the road, turning 
aside at the trail that debouched West. Suddenly 
she paused. 

“What’s that?” she asked. 

“What?” 

“That thing ahead, among the trees.” 

“Oh that!” He gave an easy laugh. “It’s one 
of the trestles of the bucket tramway. I run that 
for a living now. I’ll explain it when we get under- 
neath.” 

“Is that what it is ? I took it for a Hoodoo ! Say, 
it is certainly quiet here.” 

He was thinking so to himself. He could hear 
his heart beat, and wondered if she also heard it. 
Once again they were together, and this time there 
was a sense of seclusion. Next minute it was dissi- 
pated; for they came out on the plateau that but- 
tressed the mountain — and before them were the 
Chinamen, and the Chinamen’s homes. A little town 
was perched up there. To the pilgrim adventuring 
thither, if he had not been informed of its existence 
in advance, the sight of the place might well have 
brought something of the thrill that comes on sud- 
denly seeing a mountain-top lake. Quaint houses, 
reminiscent of prints of villages in China, clustered 
around the patchwork fields, astonishingly trig and 
“just so”; and across these perfect paddocks came 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 


159 


the thin sound of an Oriental fiddle being played 
upon in one of the shanties. From another rose 
a kind of single-string singing, a touch plaintive, 
somewhat eerie, and of a thinness like that of a 
mosquito-hum. 

“They’re creepy!” said Mildred. “But we’ll go 
ahead. I don’t feel unpleasant too much with a 
man with me, but I just couldn’t come up here with- 
out ” he hung on her words. He wanted her 

to say “you,” and not “a man” again — “a man,” 
she ended. 

“There’s not the slightest call to be scared. 
You’re all right with me,” he declared. 

Her ears caught a note of something like diffident 
plaint in his tones; it wasn’t that he stressed the 
“me” — it was rather that his voice dropped there. 
She thought he “had it bad,” and gave him a side- 
long look, not bantering but languishing. But all 
these Mongolians, hoeing and ditching and weeding, 
and pottering along on the tiny narrow paths be- 
tween the beds, with bamboo poles on their shoul- 
ders, buckets of water depending therefrom, made 
her smile brief. Her gaze roved over the settle- 
ment. The top of an ivory pagoda, it seemed, should 
have loomed up behind, instead of the long, last 
hump of Astley Mountain, menacing, uncouth, grim, 
forbidding. 

“There certainly is something creepy about them,” 
she repeated. 

“Like mites in cheese,” suggested Sam. 


160 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Yes.” 

“Look — not a blade of grass, not a single weed 
left to combat the growth of a vegetable,” he com- 
mented, pointing to the plots as he picked a way 
for her. 

At their doors the Chinamen watched, their eyes 
moving like the eyes of lemurs, following the move- 
ments of the uninvited visitors, saying nothing. Now 
and then one came near, pausing, on gardening in- 
tent. “How-do, John!” Sam would say. “O-h! 
How-do!” John would reply, his face lighting up 
and the smile of smiles appearing. Then there came 
toward them one of the kind that doesn’t smile. He 
said “Hullo!” 

“Hullo!” Sam responded. 

“What you want?” asked the Chinaman. 

“Come look see,” said Sam, a deeper tone in his 
voice. It was intended to imply, and it did imply, 
for John understood: “I am an American. You 
are a foreigner, and a squatter at that. I have cer- 
tainly as great a right to be here as you! Don’t 
forget !” 

The Chinaman fell behind, but followed close on 
their heels. Sam paid no further apparent heed to 
him, continued slowly in his peregrinations and de- 
livered his comments, like a Cook’s guide. 

“You see, down there, they’ve carried earth even 
on to that boulder in the middle of the creek, stuck 
up bits of packing-case to hold it all intact, and so 
they’ve made a vegetable garden to grow six cab- 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 


161 


bages, or a peck of peas — always something.” 

He turned round casually and glanced at the 
Chinaman, somewhat as Cobbett glanced at the 
Squire at Trotton (if one is allowed a “literary 
allusion”), and the Chinaman drifted away along a 
tributary path between the beds. 

“It’s very interesting, but they do just make me 
shudder,” she said. “It must be fine to be a strong 
man! I like the way you managed that fellow.” 

“Oh he was easy. I like to be friendly with all 
men, but when a man puts up that kind of intimi- 
dating bluff on me He’s all right!” he ended. 

A dozen paces more, and there at their feet, as 
the guide-books say, lay Kootenay, giving a quaint 
object-lesson in perspective with its ranged side- 
walks. The sight of that less recondite town, the 
pleasant white-man town, that seemed to have no 
secrets, was good to Mildred. She felt more at 
ease, stopped to look down at the lake and the roofs 
of the robustly planned homes. 

“I can see our residence,” she said. “Where are 
you living?” 

“At the same old place — Timpkin’s Boarding 
House.” 

“Not the Grand Western?” 

“No. See down there — that’s where I work now, 
just below. If you follow the trestle-tops of the 
bucket-tram, where it comes out of the woods, you 
can pick out the power-house, to the right of the 
furnaces.” He turned toward her. “Do you re- 


162 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


member telling me to rustle myself a good job?” he 
enquired. 

It was either inspiration or abandonment on his 
part, that question. Its unexpectedness at that junc- 
ture (although she had expected something of the 
kind) startled Mildred. 

“Yes — when you told me about some girl — didn’t 
think you should speak to her till you were making 
good Yes, I remember. How is she?” 

Serious Sam looked in her face, and in response 
her eyes flashed with what might be banter, or might 
be — she baffled him. She turned her head away, 
giving him only a vision of fascinating neck; but 
instead of being fascinated downright he was fasci- 
nated, as it were, with the brake on. He was also 
annoyed. And that annoyance she tapped. They 
had been walking on along the path that cuts down- 
hill from the Chinese farms (it is a white man’s 
ranch now, by the way, but the path on the slope 
there remains as it was then), with the twist of the 
smelter road visible just beneath them; and a big 
granite slab inviting, she stopped. She leant against 
the granite boulder and deliberately contemplated 
the panorama. To that so deliberate, not to say 
histrionic contemplation, he left her, till she was 
pleased to acknowledge his presence and remember 
that they were in the midst of a talk. 

Suddenly she said: “Why are you so serious?” 

“Because I am serious,” he replied, stressing the 
“am.” Then' — “I am very serious,” stressing the 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 


163 


“very.” Then — “Sometimes I am desperately 

serious.” 

“But not at the moment, surely! Not here!” 

He didn’t understand. He wondered if she was 
merely being flippant toward him. 

“The desperation isn’t so evident now, perhaps,” 
he said. “But afterwards — it is always so — I feel 
as desperate as ever if I don’t ” and he stuck. 

“If you don’t what?” she enquired, anxious to 
hear more, though a few minutes before she had 
seemed desirous to fob him off. 

He frowned. He looked this way and that as if 
for aid; and Mildred’s eyes rested on him. 

“ — — if I don’t know your view on that — that 
case I postulated at your brother’s, on the veranda 
that evening.” 

“I gave you my view then,” she said. “Are you 
not in touch with her yet?” 

As she spoke she moved slightly, as though grown 
stiff in her long-held position there, and her hand 
brushed his sleeve. 

Sam gazed at her, had impulse to grasp her, and 
something restrained him — something outside him- 
self. It was not the same kind of restraint that he 
had exercised on the veranda at Henderson’s ranch. 
Something exterior, not interior, it seemed, advised 
him not to say: “You are the woman of my 
trouble.” He was divided, and one part of him 
advised the other to call a halt, at least for the time 
being. Voices also, at this crisis, came to their ears; 


164 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


and on the path along the edge of the bluff, the path 
into which the trail from the Chinese ranches de- 
bouched, there appeared, between the close-drawn 
bush, none other than Webley, his wife behind. 

“Spectacles !” Webley was saying. “Not love you 

in spectacles ! Why, , Jess, I’d love you in 

blinkers. You go to the oculist first time we — no, 
you go tomorrow. Oh!” 

He saw Mildred and Sam, whipped off his hat, 
and there was a criss-cross of greetings. 

Sam was oddly moved. That love-speech of 
Webley’s, apropos of spectacles, was like the sound- 
ing of a tuning fork over his own love-lyric. He 
found that he was just a hint ashamed of himself. 
And as he showed that hint of shame, Webley felt, 
on his side, a touch of embarrassment over the in- 
advertent publicity he had given his declaration to 
his wife. So neither noticed the other’s confusion. 
It struck Sam, remembering Grosset’s description of 
symptoms inspired by some woman or another after 
whom he fluttered that there was in him a good deal 
of the “Whoo! That’s how I feel!” spirit. 

“Well,” said Mrs. Webley, the chatter about 
nothing in particular coming to a sudden end, “we’ll 
leave you to enjoy the view.” 

Again bows, smiles, and Mildred and Sam were 
alone, in a self-conscious sort of way looking after 
Webley’s hat, visible above the tangle of shrub, 
drifting away. From watching its disappearance 
Sam turned to find Mildred’s eyes on him again. 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 263 


“I suppose you know,” he said slowly, “that 2 
think an awful lot of you.” 

“Silly boy!” she exclaimed, and gave him a play* 
ful tap on the shoulder. “You mustn’t forget the 
other girl,” and she laughed gaily. 

He bore the expression of one tangled, looked 
like a wistful, pathetic infant. Privately he was dis- 
tressed by the interior clash he felt of impulses and 
reasoning — of impulse and impulse, of reasonings 
and reasonings. There was the sound of breaking 
branches again. 

“Here are some more people,” said Mildred. 
“Let us go on.” 

From leaning against the great grey-blue granite 
boulder, she came erect, with a lithe spring, and led 
off, Sam beside her. They passed under the bucket- 
tram-lines, where they swung overhead from the 
woods above to the power-house below. 

“I wonder,” she said, looking up, “if a man could 
ride in one of those buckets?” 

Sam came out of his grim meditation with a jar, 
and had to reconstruct what she had said — had as 
it were to ask his ears to register again. 

“No. Yes. Yes — I should think one could, for 
a bet, or for devilment.” 

“Or to show one wasn’t scared to try,” Mildred 
murmured. 

“Yes. Once would be enough, I should think. 
It doesn’t travel quickly, and if the escapade got on 
a man’s nerves it would be a prolonged agony. Look 


166 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


here, we can go down this way — on to the smelter 
road, and cross the creek by the smelter bridge.” 

He went before her down the steep path, holding 
up a hand to support her in the descent. Once 
down on the road it was but a stone’s throw to the 
bridge — and there she was almost home. But Sam 
was hardly aware of his surroundings. Road, 
bridge, creek, windows of the houses on the town 
side — all seemed in another world. He was out- 
wardly calm, inwardly in a ferment. The holding 
of Mildred’s hand, the aiding of her on the path, 
had disturbed and distressed him again. He could 
have cried to her: “What is it all about — all this be- 
tween you and me? Help me! Tell me! Play the 
game !” Or he could almost have rushed away from 
her, to be rid of a distraction that she invoked but 
did not appease. At the corner she paused. 

“It was sweet of you to take me upon that per- 
sonally conducted tour,” she said. 

“I can’t tell you what a pleasure it has been to 
me,” he replied. “But you know that.” 

“I think I understand you pretty well,” she said. 
“I must get back now; I’ve been gone for much more 
than a short stroll.” 

She held forth her hand. He took it; he held 
it; he renounced it; and she turned away. There 
was nothing for it but to go home, in a haze, in a 
daze, the pressure of her hand seeming to linger in 
his as he strode east to Timpkin’s. But abruptly 
he was brought out of his heady state by a hail from 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 


167 


someone who came tramping down one of the steep 
hill streets that dissect this one on which he walked. 
It was the last man in the world with whom he 
wished to renew acquaintance at that moment; it wasi 
Grosset, one-time domiciled at Timpkin’s, now re- 
moved elsewhere because of bugs — the wood in the 
boarding-house having gone the way of too much 
wood. To the hypersensitive reader who objects to 
mention of these pests — an apology. But there they 
were; and they are unavoidable local colour. Poor 
Timpkin! He was “up against it” always, some- 
how, it seems. The vermin may have been in the 
wood from the beginning. No one can tell; but 
there they were anyhow; and any day Sam might 
discover them, as Grosset had discovered them. In 
a city of wooden houses such things will happen, and 
the people there are not prudish about mentioning 
them. They say “bug” as easily as they say “house.” 
They don’t say: “There are what-you-may-call-’ems 
in that house!” They say: “Bugs! Not in mine!” 
and go elsewhere. 

“You are a stranger,” said Grosset. “You been 
out of town?” 

“Yes,” answered Sam, monosyllabic. 

“Back for a holiday, or working here?” Grosset 
asked, head up and canted back, expression pleas- 
ant. 

“Working here!” snapped Sam, unpleasant. 

He looked directly at Grosset and took new stock 
of him. Yes, he was a coarse-looking man — affluent 


168 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


and vulgar; but doubtless, the young man tried to 
tell himself, he had his good points. What made 
Sam specially worried about meeting him now was 
the feeling he had of being, in himself, too much and 
abominably kin with Grosset! He recalled him 
simply as the man who had been off his head 
(“Whoo! That’s how I feel!”) about some girl. 
He was hurt somewhat as persons have put on record 
that they are hurt on entering a monkey-house — 
hurt by the sense of similarities. And, on top of 
that, he hated himself for his attitude toward this 
other human being, this Grosset, even while it pos- 
sessed him. He didn’t like to feel a suggestion of 
priggishness in himself. 

“It’s a pleasure to see you again,” remarked 
Grosset, and beamed broader. In spite of Haig’s 
desire to be sociable and kindly, and all that sort 
of thing, he detected a leer in that smile. “Saw you 
with a flame of mine!” Grosset added. 

Sam’s brows puckered. 

“Mistaken, I think,” he said coldly. 

“Don’t think so,” replied Grosset. “I saw you 
coming down to the smelter road.” 

“I’ve been up looking at the Chinese farms with 
a friend ” said Sam. “I don’t think she was ever 
what you might call a flame ” 

“That tallies !” cried Grosset, gaily interrupting, 
cheerily bland and oblivious of Sam’s warning colour 
and expression. “You came down one of the old 
trails on the other side of the creek. I was having 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 


169 


a loaf along in the bush up there when you stopped 
at the edge of the bluff.” 

“Your eyes don’t play you fair at long range,” 
suggested Sam. 

“Tut, tut! Don’t get ragged! Why, I know her 
every movement as I know — as I know — what shall 
I say?” 

“Cut out similes,” said Sam. “I expect your 
trouble is that you imagine every woman you see is 
your old flame, as you call her.” He spoke from 
experience. “And anyhow” — he glared at Grosset, 
who was canting his head afresh and producing once 
more the bland smile that seemed to Sam worse than 
the Chinese specimens he had recently seen — “I don’t 
like you to talk about my friend like this. The lady 
you saw me with is Miss Henderson, sister-in-law of 

Mathers, of this town, and you ” he had really 

no need to bring in a slur at Grosset’s trade, but he 
did; he was beginning to be in a temper, instead of 
having a temper in him — “you damned yard-stick 
wielder ” 

“I won’t have you talk to me in that way!” 
growled Grosset, and made a downward telescopic 
motion of his head, that further shortened his short 
neck. “Do you think I can’t hit? Do you think be- 
cause I spend most of my time in a store that I can’t 
play chucker-out to the toughest tough that ever 
comes in to my place? Do you think I ” 

Sam stopped him dead. 

“If you want to scare me,” he said, in dangerously 


170 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


low tone, “you’d better know that after you’ve got 
through the attempt I shall ask you to make good on 
it.” 

“Oh I can make good all right. You’re a sancti- 
monious fool, Mr. Haig. I don’t object to you but- 
ting in there. Not I. I was only going to wish you 
better luck than I’ve had — so far. Miss Henderson 
is the woman I told you of months ago — months 
ago ” 

At that Sam hit! His fist went hooking under 
iGrosset’s jaw, and Grosset reeled back, grabbed the 
thin stem of one of the boulevard trees beside which 
they had halted, recovered equilibrium, and shot 
'out a fist at his opponent. But Sam ducked, and 
Grosset hit empty air. With nostrils dilating Haig 
smote him again, sent him on his back, and wait- 
ed, breathing deeply, for him to rise — was thus 
waiting, pulling up his sleeves to give his hands full 
play in the next round, when steps sounded close, 
and a stout, sunburnt man in blue serge made a three- 
some of the two-some affair. This man, who seemed 
to have evolved there, gave a little brushing move- 
ment to his coat, thereby disclosing a silver tag. 
Piqued by this interposition of law-and-order, Sam 
comically (or when he was cool it would be comi- 
cally, maybe) broke out with: 

“This has nothing to do with you! This is a 
private business ! And say — something more : I 
don’t want it in the papers! Neither does he,” he 
added, indicating Grosset at his feet in semi-recum- 


AN ENCOUNTER WITH GROSSET 


171 


bent attitude. “That’s all right. You can let us go. 
Come on, Grosset, get up. Shake a leg. This is 
our scrap.” 

Grosset rose and dusted himself with great dig- 
nity. The man in blue, with the silver tag on his 
chest, contemplated Sam Haig curiously. 

“I want him arrested for assault,” said Grosset. 

“Get away!” cried Sam. “I wish I had you up 
at Camp Henderson for a week. There’s no police- 
man there.” He flattered himself that the servant 
of the law might be moved by his “gift of the gab.” 
He even began to back away. “Go on, Grosset, 
walk — shake a leg. You don’t want publicity about 
this!” He turned again to the upholder of the pub- 
lic peace. “It’s all right. It’s nothing at all.” 

“You come here,” said the policeman, making 
after him; and he clearly thought he had encoun- 
tered a tough specimen, to judge by the way he put 
hand to hip under his jacket. 

“I assure you,” declared Sam, “that there’s noth- 
ing in it. He only got a bit of what he deserves, 
and ” 

Then he suddenly found himself looking into the 
barrel of the policeman’s revolver that put an end 
to debate, and handcuffs were nipped on his wrists. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE CHAIN-GANG 

N OW it has to be told that Kootenay was pass- 
ing through the period of cutting things out . 
Visiting the town at the time of this story, 
the chronicler of it, who looked on at it all, saw it 
taking place, asked a friend (for he had known it 
in earlier days) : “Do you ever now have fellows 
coming rolling into town and standing on the side- 
walk announcing: Tm a son of a gun from 
Omaha’ ?” 

“No,” was the reply; “we cut that out long ago.” 
They were, indeed, cutting out more than that by 
the time of this narrative. The arresting policeman 
had seen enough of the fight on Astley Street to bear 
witness, without any hint of perjury, that Sam was 
assaulting and battering. Out of his own mouth he 
also proved himself untouched by remorse; he had 
even boasted of some place, whence he had come, 
that there were no police there. The police all the 
world over have the better of it. If you state your 
case vigorously they say: “Prisoner was excited.” 
If you keep a grip on yourself they say: “Prisoner 
seemed callous.” One of Grosset’s eyes was shut, to 
bear witness that, whether he had been trying to 
assault and batter or not, he had been battered; and 
172 


THE CHAIN-GANG 


173 


Sam had no bruise to show. If thus he behaved in 
a town with police to protect the public, what would 
he not do if let loose at such places as he had men- 
tioned, where, in his rage, he desired to meet Gros- 
set? It was all against him fairly and unfairly, 
rightly and wrongly. 

The joke of the thing is that the policeman who 
arrested the young man had doubtless admiration 
for his views; for the policemen of Kootenay were 
apt to be men like that. But they were cutting things 
out in the little mountain town, so Sam was very 
briefly sentenced to seven days of hard labour. Had 
he only had the sense to ask that a note be sent to 
his friend Webley, he might have fared otherwise ; the 
police over all the world are much the same in various 
particulars, and Webley could have pulled wires. 
But Sam took the affair philosophically. He neither 
railed against his sentence nor thought of pulling 
wires. Seven days’ hard labour was apparently what 
Fortune' — or Misfortune — had in store for him. 
When there came upon him a tendency to object, to 
resent, he told himself that the experience would be 
interesting. Everything is interesting in this world, 
thought he ; even the tedious can be interesting. The 
flight of time adds a glamour to the joys and gives 
consolation during tortures. That was his attitude; 
but he did not realise all that the phrase “hard 
labour” was to mean. 

If Destiny was in this episode, then Destiny was 
kind in one particular only — that it left him ignorant 


174 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


of what his sentence meant till he had managed to 
take easily the first fact, the fact of incarceration. 
The ignominy of coming in contact with the police 
was neither here nor there to him. There are those 
who feel contact with the police so ignominious that 
they dislike to have a constable call on them to say 
that they are innocent of some charge laid against 
them by people who have merely used the police as a 
means to annoy. Sam was otherwise. He found 
his position only tedious, not ignominious, and de- 
cided to take it easily. What he had done w T as right 
in his own eyes ; it was wrong in the eyes of the law 
— that was all. He did not so much as rebel against 
the law; in his cell he even spoke to himself a little 
homily on the necessity for order. 

The day of the trial counted as one of the days 
of the sentence. Of this Sam, back in his cell, was 
informed by a friendly warder who chatted to him 
through the grilled door, and remarked that it was 
“sure worth a week’s hard labour to pound that oily 
son of a gun!” This was very mollifying; and the 
friendliness of the man in uniform on the free side 
of the grille cast a new light, for Sam, on prison life 
as it is in such a place as Kootenay. The warder had 
his own opinion of the seriousness of the crime for 
which the prisoner was being punished. 

“I suppose there was a woman in it?” he ventured. 

Sam merely glanced at him and closed his eyes. 

“That will be all right,” declared the warder. 
“Everything blows over. Why, a week ain’t nothing. 


THE CHAIN-GANG 


175 


I was in bed myself, once, for two-three weeks — with 
small-pox. Ever been up the road to the Frashier 
mine?” 

“Yes.” 

“You can see the pest-house through the trees. 
It was built because of me. I’m the only small-pox 
case there has ever been in Kootenay. They rushed 
up a little shack for me there, away off a bit through 
the timber, and had a nurse over from the hospital, 
and all the time I was lying ill they were building a 
right smart infectious diseases hospital alongside. I 
never hear of small-pox but I think of carpenters. I 
ain’t what you would call an imaginating man, but 
one day when I was a bit light-headed I got it on my 
mind that they were whanging nails into my coffin. 
They just put the last paint on the swell hospital 
when I got better in the shack. So then they burnt 
down the shack me and the nurse had been isolated 
in. Here’s someone coming. I’ll see you later.” 

This chat helped to philosophise Sam, and to re- 
mind him that great men, and happy men, had in 
their time been in prison. There was no need to get 
bitter about his incarceration just because of the pop- 
ular distaste for gaol-birds ! But when on the Thurs- 
day morning he was ordered to fall-in in the corridor, 
while a man with a Winchester rifle stood at the 
end, and the friendly warder put an iron ring round 
his ankle, he began to be worried. There was a 
string of seven men in the corridor, and they all 
stood there, each looking at the back of the head of 


176 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


the man in front (except number one of course, who 
merely stared along the white passage) calm as tan- 
dem horses awaiting the harness. From the ring on 
each man’s ankle to the ring worn by the next man 
there was affixed a steel bar with a swivel arrange- 
ment, so as to allow of them walking. 

“All right!” said the warder, after the last in the 
string had been harnessed. 

“All right ! Quick march !” rasped the lean man 
who carried the rifle. 

Sam wanted to yell. He wanted to refuse to 
march. He wanted to bend down and try to wrench 
that steel bar away. 

“Grosset has something to answer for when I get 
out,” he muttered; for he realised what kind of “hard 
labour” was in store. 

He was in the Chain Gang — to be marched 
through the streets under the gaze of all men; and 
suddenly, despite his protestations to himself that 
he had been right to bruise Grosset, he flinched from 
the publicity that would be thrust on him when he 
passed out of the corridor into the streets of Koote- 
nay. Bringing up the rear he looked, now consumed 
with rage, about as tough a character as the old-timer 
who herded them and had been given the duty of 
taking out the chain-gang because of his repute as a 
fighter. He was a man who could not settle to any 
simple work in which there was little hope of never 
having to wrestle with anyone, to hit anyone, or to 
speed a bullet into anyone. He had known Koote- 


THE CHAIN-GANG 


177 


nay when it was Fort Kootenay and every man wore 
a Colt on his hip. Thirty years before, had he been 
in Sam’s shoes and felled a Grosset, he would prob- 
ably have pulled a gun on any interfering gentleman, 
even one adorned with a silver badge. 

Outside the new granite building called prison 
Sam walked with eyes staring fixedly at the back of 
the head of the man in front. He suffered at first 
from what scientists call “psychical blindness.” Al- 
though it was a clear, resplendent morning, the street 
was a blur, the passing faces were blurs. When he 
did deflect his gaze from the neck before him, he dis- 
tinguished no features of any passer-by; he recog- 
nised no one. But presently, through other sense 
than that of sight, he was touched by the people — 
the free, the unmanacled people on the side-walks. 
Telepathy, maybe, or something of the kind, con- 
veyed their commiseration, or the fact that they 
lacked censorious opinion, to him. He blinked his 
eyes over the psychical blur and looked about delib- 
erately, very deliberately; and it seemed to him that 
the chain-gang was surveyed (that is by those who 
paid any attention at all to it) much as folks look at 
soldiers going by. Many, he noticed, were just 
aware of it and no more — not interested. Some 
dropped their eyes to the side-walk, as who should 
say : “I won’t stare, and make your punishment, for 
whatever your crime, more unpleasant.” One 
opened a newspaper, buried his face in its wide-held 
pages — in great haste, after his first glimpse of the 


178 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


prisoners. A humanistic thrill came to Sam and 
eased him. He was amazed at the number of winks 
he received from young men going along to free 
work. Hilarity suddenly came to him, and it evi- 
dently came to the others as well ; for all at once the 
whole string broke into a kind of cake-walk, jangling 
the fetters. 

“None of that ! None of that, now !” growled the 
antique man with the Winchester, pacing at their side, 
butt of rifle tucked between his body and biceps; and 
the cake-walking immediately stopped, after its three 
brief steps. 

“Gee! Pretty tough !” Sam heard a voice com- 
ment, whether of the warder or the wards he was 
uncertain- — and careless. 

“Get it for?” he heard another, evidently replying 
to someone who had asked what manner of crimes 
were punished by chain-gang work. “Oh — nothing. 
Drunks, I expect. They don’t put anything much 
more serious ...” 

He lost the rest as the clinking queue quick- 
stepped forward. At the crossing of Dawson Street, 
city’s centre, because of the crowds (and because of 
self-consciousness coming again there) he fell once 
more abruptly into the “psychical blindness” condi- 
tion. Glad indeed, was he, when at last they came to 
the tramp’s end on one of the newest upper avenues, 
and were ordered to halt beside a vacant lot that 
showed signs of recent labour. 

“You can stand easy now, boys,” said he of the 


THE CHAIN-GANG 


179 


Winchester, “till the boss arrives. And don’t let me 
hear you talking.” 

So saying he strolled away to some distance, nurs- 
ing his rifle, watching them, but in no glaring and full- 
faced manner. He went far enough to allow of talk, 
if they wished to talk, not reaching his ears. 

“Who’s this fellow at the end?” asked one quickly. 

“What are you in for, partner?” asked another. 

“I hit a man,” replied Sam. “The policeman who 
came on the scene couldn’t see that it was purely a 
personal affair.” 

“No laughing!” ordered the guardian, for at that 
naif explanation one had giggled an octave too 
high. 

“Does he want us to weep?” the culprit growled. 

“Oh, he’s all right,” said one. “You know who he 
is, partner, don’t you?” 

This was presumably meant for Sam. 

“No, I don’t,” said he. 

“He’s old Jack MacDonald. You must have 
heard of him. He was through here before we were 
hatched. He used to be a buffalo hunter in the old 
days — out on the Plains. I guess he’s about eighty. 
Why, he’s an old Indian fighter! We’re nothing to 
him — we’re a Sunday-school class out for a walk to 
him. That’s how he really looks on us. When he 
•leans against the wall and thinks his private think 
there, while we’re shovelling, or when he sits down 
on a log and fills his pipe, with the rifle across his 
knees, he’s thinking of no ten cents’ worth of black 


180 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


eye, and one biff on the jaw! He’s think about the 
men he scalped!” 

The last word was too energetic. 

“I can hear you talking!” cried old Jack Mac- 
Donald. “Don’t you get me irritated so early in 
the morning. You be careful, or after you get loose 
to work I’ll shoot somebody for an example, and 
take the string home one shy ! I will I All I got to 
say is that one o’ you tried to escape. Don’t forget. 
If I go away a little ways from you I don’t expect to 
hear talkin’. You’re surely a bum crowd, you fel- 
lows, if you don’t know when you’re well off, Good- 
morning to you.” 

But this last was not a quaint way of ending his 
speech. It was addressed to a surly person who ap- 
peared on the scene, lurching down on the chain-gang 
with a “here’s at you!” air. If this man had pos- 
sessed horns he would assuredly have tossed up a 
hunk of earth as he hove (or is it heaved?) down 
on them. But even he, fierce though was his appear- 
ance, was no tyrant all day. He unlocked the steel 
rods from the anklets, then unlocked a tool-chest. 

“Tumble in now! Get your picks and shovels!” 
he snapped, making the words sound like the fiercest 
invective. 

The old-timer lounged beside the tool-chest, stuck 
out his chin, frowned his old eyebrows down over 
his eyes. Men had been known to set upon their 
warders even in chain-gangs (and even short-sentence 
men), when the feel of a shovel in their hands made 


THE CHAIN-GANG 


181 


them, in a mad moment, suddenly and emotionally 
think they might as well smite out at their shepherds 
and make a rush for immediate liberty. But this was 
a genial throng, and soon all were down in a ditch — 
digging out a basement for the city drill-hall, or fire- 
hall, or what-not; ’tis a detail. The day was not 
bereft of fun. Once a man drew near, stood looking 
down, and then they heard him say: “Good-day, 
boss. Is there any chance of a job here?” 

They all laughed as they shovelled, Sam included. 
Then they listened for the reply. 

“You’d better go and do something if you want 
a job here, mister,” said the boss. “Nothing too 
desperate or you’ll overdo it. These gentlemen down 
there have a right to work in God’s open air because 
they took a drop too much, or something like that. 
One of them pulled a Chinaman’s pigtail, from 
brooding over cheap labour with three fingers of 
nose-paint in him, and we’ve got to guard against 
inter-national. . w .” 

He stopped abruptly. Evidently the man who had 
been looking for work departed with alacrity when 
the significance of the devastating reply pierced his 
intellect. It is wonderful, even when one is “up 
against it,” how far the genial interludes will atone 
for the hours of gloom. By skilful self-delusion 
one can crawl into a condition of believing that all 
woe is but the setting for the little jewels of jollity 
and joy, to make the frail jollity, or the rich joy, jol- 
lier and more joyful. At any rate, when one is in a 


182 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


chain-gang (by the way, this is not necessarily auto- 
biographical !) one tries to look at life so. Sam cer- 
tainly slept well that night, and to the popular adjec- 
tival objections to prison life he would have said 
“pshaw !” at any time. Cold cell, hard bed, stone 
floor, were neither here nor there, “cut no ice.” At 
Camp Henderson, which was not a prison, but a camp 
full of free men drawing wages of two to four dollars 
a day, the beds were hard — just planks with a sack 
of straw flung on them; the nights were cold, the 
old box-cars verminous. The bed in the cell was good 
enough for any man who did not demand the enerva- 
tion of feathers; and there were no vermin. Work 
in the open air was all the sleeping draught Sam re- 
quired. 

To be sure, as an experience (for that was how 
he had decided to look upon it) , one day in the chain- 
gang would have sufficed; but a week was decreed, 
and to fret would do no good. The young man, who 
so recently, under the spell of a lady, had lain awake 
o’ nights to argue over every facet of his chats with 
her, like the village idiot plucking petals from a flower 
and chanting “She loves me, she loves me not” — this 
young man had suddenly “side-tracked” all consider- 
ations of pros and cons. He dismissed, at each ap- 
pearance, the horrid sprite that whispered: “Argue 
it out. Examine it. You do feel this is unjust, igno- 
minious and undeserved.” He just stretched out on 
his hard bed, in his cold cell, in the hard world, and 
dropped tranquilly to sleep. 


THE CHAIN-GANG 


183 


On the next day there befell an incident. It was af- 
ternoon, and Sam was digging away at the founda- 
tions down in a six-foot cleft, putting foot to shovel, 
driving it home, with back of right hand to inside of 
bent knees, rhythmic, steady, and slinging up the 
earth well over the sides, working as though he was 
receiving wages for his labour, when he was aware 
of someone looking down at him. He was on the 
point of glancing up, when a packet of cigarettes fell 
at his feet, followed by splinters off a block of sulphur 
matches. Instead of stooping at once to lift this 
treasure-trove he looked up, all eagerness to discover 
who befriended him out of the world of free men. 
Possibly it was some crank with a turn for promiscu- 
ous pity; perhaps it was someone he knew. Perhaps 
— perhaps it was — but no, surely it could not be 
She ! It might be some emissary from her. 

He had only a glimpse of a back, no more. 
Pressed against one side of the ditch, and tiptoeing 
up, he was only just in time. If he had stopped to 
lift the gifts he would have been too late. It was 
Marsden. There was no doubt of it — Marsden. 
And on the instant he forgave Marsden every slight. 
His uncouth “Do you want to make a dollar?”; his 
grim pronouncement, in Webley’s garden, that it was 
a hard world — a pronouncement made with an edge 
to it, as though to imply that Sam was of the effete — ♦ 
these fell away and were forgotten. Soon he would 
be able to say his thanks. It was a fine little thing 
that Marsden had done. And then Sam knew how 


184 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


much this chain-gang episode really galled him. He 
hugged to himself the significance of this friendliness. 
He rejoiced to think that the folks in the world from 
which he had been culled by that man in blue would 
not ostracise him. He had not seen Marsden’s face 
— only his back as he strolled on, and disappeared. 


CHAPTER VIII 


marsden’s first card 

M ARSDEN’S face was grim, grim and smiling, 
as he walked very deliberately past the 
gang, and with utter regularity of tread pro- 
gressed along Astley Street to his destination — Mrs. 
Mathers’ spreading-eaved home at the top of Manson 
Avenue. He opened and closed the gate as one per- 
forming a tremendous action; it was as if no gates 
would ever open or close again. Still with that de- 
liberate tread and bearing, he walked to the door, put 
finger to the bell-push, and pressed it in a way cal- 
culated to make even so metallic a thing as a bell 
announce : “There is someone without who has his 
way.” When Mrs. Mathers’ Irish help answered 
that peremptory summons, Marsden said: “Is Mrs. 
Mathers to home?” And he noticed, as soon as it 
was out, that he had said to home instead of at home. 
He hadn’t said to home for years. He came from 
those regions Eastward where folk do speak like 
that, but he had discarded to long ago, for the prepo- 
sition more widely used. It was a sign to him, how- 
ever, that he was not as calm as he believed; and a 
small sign was sufficient for Marsden. 

“Mrs. Mathers is not at home,” replied the help, 
as Marsden knew she would say. He was well aware 
185 


186 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


that Mrs. Mathers had gone out with her husband 
on a visit to Seattle. The Kootenay News had an- 
nounced the departure in the Social Gossip column. 

“I had better see Miss Henderson, then/’ he re- 
plied. 

“Step insoide.” 

He was taken to a rearward room with windows 
looking out on the Western fold of the big valley. 

“Miss Henderson you want to see?” enquired the 
hefty door-opener, puzzling Marsden by her brain- 
lessness. 

“Yes — Miss Henderson. Tell her it is business. 
Marsden is my name” ; and then, as the girl departed, 
he strolled over to a window and stood there gazing 
out until the door opened, till the door closed, till 
Mildred’s voice said: “Well, Mr. Marsden?” He 
turned, and stepped slowly toward her as she ad- 
vanced to him — a hint of curiosity in her eyes as well 
as the smile of a hostess welcoming. 

“How do you do? Sit down. I hear it is a busi- 
ness call.” 

“Yes,” he said, and as Mildred sank down, clap- 
ping a cushion, he drew a chair nearer and seated 
himself with a large leisurely movement. “Well, 
yes, business is the only way to describe it, though I 
believe it will turn out pleasure.” 

“I’m glad to hear that,” Mildred responded, 
bright as ever, expectant, awaiting disclosures. 

“How have you been since we last met?” he asked. 

“Very well,” she said. “That was at your picnic 


MARSDEN’S FIRST CARD 


187 


trip up the lake, wasn’t it? I think you must have 
introduced motor-boats to Kootenay, for I’ve seen 
several others since.” 

“That’s right. That was the last time we met,” 
agreed Marsden. “The first time huh! I won- 

der if you remember it?” 

“Why yes — I remember it well.” His eyes were 
steady on her and for a moment she hesitated. “It 
was at Mrs. Innes’ — at that house-warming they 
gave.” 

“Sure?” he asked, smiling, but his gaze still prob- 
ing. 

“Wasn’t it?” said Mildred. “I remember being 
introduced to you there.” 

“That’s so,” he replied, “that was the introduc- 
tion, as it is called. But there are other things in 
the world besides introductions.” 

Her eyes considered a corner of the ceiling. 

This man, too, it appeared, had been shot by some 
roving glance of her eye and had marked the day of 
his first sight of her with a red letter. 

“Do you remember going along Front Street in 
the spring?” he suggested, gently. “One day in May, 
it was, when we had that sudden kind of advanced 
summer, and the bugs and flies came out before their 
time, and the parasols too — light blue; and blue 
frocks; and you were walking alone down to the 
lake where the Western Hardware Company has its 
warehouse now. It was just vacant lots then. That 
was the first time we met. We were introduced by 


188 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


Innes about a week later. Innes didn’t know, but I 
worked that; I got him to ask me so as to meet you. 
I guessed you’d be there, and I just put myself in his 
way three days before, when I heard he was giving 
a house-warm and a hop, so that he couldn’t help in- 
viting me. And I can tell you every time we’ve met 
since then. And every time I’ve had proof that I 
was right that day on Front Street when you came 
along and saw me.” 

She gave no reply; only her dress fluttered over her 
heart as though a bird moved there. Marsden 
changed his position slightly. 

“Now, Miss Henderson,” said he. “I know I’m 
not the only one that admires you. You have a lot of 
admirers, and some you like — they’re not bad fel- 
lews. And some aren’t worthy of you a little bit.” 

She regained her breath. “Do you know, Mr. 
Marsden, that this is a most unusual visit?” she 
asked. 

“I do,” said he. “But I ask you to tell me when 
it shows any sign of being an impertinent one. If 
it seems that way to you, all you got to do is to ask 
me to quit, and I quit. So far I don’t think I’ve 
said anything you could call lacking in manners.” 

“You began to speak of my friends,” she re- 
marked, an odd note in her voice. It was steady, 
but she had to make an effort to keep it so. 

“We’ll cut that out, then, if it seems bordering 
on rudeness,” said Marsden. “And you just tell me 
when I’m what you would call impertinent, Miss 


MARSDEN’S FIRST CARD 


189 


Henderson. I’m surely not here to eat you, nor to 
vex you. I’m here to tell you this — that I love every 
inch of you. You’re a woman. You’re a woman 
who has seen a bit of the world. I’m going to give 
you just what’s in my heart as well as I can get the 
words to carry it out to you.” 

Mildred’s eyes showed a sudden softening; evi- 
dently she would listen to this man who came so 
“unusually” to her. 

“I saw the turn of your wrist,” said He, “that day 
when you passed — when we saw each other on Front 
Street. It looked good to me. It certainly looked 
good to me. It seemed to say things, that little wrist 
of yours. Oh yes, you’re a big tall woman, but your 
wrist is dainty to me. And the bones under the 
bloom of your face — I know them. I know the shape 
of them, and they look good to me. The build of 
you, the framing of you, the curve of your instep 
when I helped you out of the motor-boat — it was 
your instep, it was you. Do you get me, Miss Hen- 
derson? I’ll go right ahead if you won’t pretend 
shocked. If you feel shocked say so, but you won’t 
say it if you only think it’s the thing to say. That 
night at Innes’ I saw your shoulders, and they looked 
good to me — it was your framework again, and no- 
body else’s but yours. One of them I could hold in 
my hand,” and he slightly raised a hand. “I’m no 
big brute,” he went on, speaking a trifle more quickly 
after what had just preceded. “If I’m talking of 
your body it is because you caught me with that be- 


190 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


fore I heard your voice. And your voice — it was 
yours all right. It sounded good to me.” 

Mildred’s eyes were strangely bright and cloudy 
all at once. 

“And what’s inside that fascinating frame of yours 
— I surely think about that,” continued Marsden. 
“I admit I don’t know much of it; but I know enough 
to know, that the more I get to know it, it’s going to 
seem good to me — right along, right along.” 

She stared before her as if not seeing him, as if 
looking through him, and her heart beat very fast. 

“Mr. Marsden,” she said, “I never in all my life 
had any such speech made to me.” 

Marsden nodded. 

“You are an extraordinary man !” she added. 

“Do you care for me at all?” he asked. 

She raised her head, then shook it to and fro. She 
was feeling for support, with a palm flat on either 
side of her on the cushions to hold herself up. 

“Is that honest?” he persisted. “I don’t mean 
you’d lie to me knowingly, but isn’t there something 
just kind of feminine in shaking your head at me and 
giving me ‘No’ with your head shaking — the way a 
woman is liable to say ‘no’ at first with a man talking 
to her like this — according to the story-book rules of 
,the game instead of just the game? Do you get me, 
Miss Henderson? Isn’t the truth of it that you saw 
me on Front Street, and that we never meet — never 
once meet — but you feel I’m around?” 

She did not answer. 


MARSDEN’S FIRST CARD 


191 


“It’s a hard world, Miss Henderson. I’ll call you 
Mildred when you say I may — but I’m not here to 
be insulting, nor to go a step beyond a man’s right 
with a woman. I’m not here to eat you. I’m here 
to tell you a lot of things. One man makes a bid — 
so does another, so does another. And there they 
go crowding. One of them falls out, gets an acci- 
dent, maybe; another crows to himself and jumps 
in. But it’s still a hard world, still overcrowded. 
The basis of the world is rocks ” 

“I thought it was fire!” Mildred found herself 
saying, why she knew not. 

Marsden considered that. 

“Is that so?” he said. “Now you mention it — 
yes, I see — maybe it is fire. Well, that’s at the core, 
and we know nothing about it. It’s only a guess, a 
scientist’s hazard. As far down as we can go we get 
to rock, and there we quit. Why, didn’t you ever 
hear of bed-rock? Hard — yes, hard. When you’ve 
found that, and built on it, you can go easy. Miss 
Henderson — you’ll go easy if — well, if you go 
through the world with me.” 

Mildred was pale now. 

“I will have to think,” she said. 

“I don’t see the need,” he replied. “You know 
you saw me on Front Street that day, and we’ve 
seen each other every time since. If you were on 
one side of the street, and I was on the other, our 
eyes always jumped — couldn’t miss. It’s happened 
often, and you know all about it. Why, if we both 


192 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


get into the same crowded corral on Judgment Day, 
if there is a Judgment Day, I’d see you right away.” 

She smiled faintly at that; then again suddenly 
sober, once more considered the ceiling. 

“You look a bit kind of strained after this talk,” 
he said. “I can understand that this kind of thing 
might upset a woman. Your answer is Yes, but I’m 
going away now and I’ll come back some other time 
for you to say it.” He rose to his feet. “You’re 
going to marry me, all right, all right,” he informed 
her. 

She drooped her eyes, stared at the carpet, and 
her whole aspect changed. Her expression seemed 
to say. “Don’t be too sure!” Then she rose and 
walked toward the door, he at her side. Without 
another word, having thus crossed the room, Mars- 
den opened the door, and Mildred stepped into the 
hall. They passed straight out into the mosquito- 
netted porch, and there both halted. 

“You’re going to marry me,” he repeated. “I’m 
no kid — I’m no man for sentimentality. It’s a hard 
world, and you want a man to lean on. You don’t 
want a man who thinks the world is green grass, and 
blush roses, and all that sort of thing. And you 
don’t want a man who thinks it’s a heart of fire, 
either; that’s because you’ve got plenty of fire your- 
self. I’m the man who will let that fire go on burn- 
ing. I know all this is not usual, but you can’t say 
I’ve been familiar. I’ve given you as near myself 
as I know how. I’ve not called you anything but 


MARSDEN’S FIRST CARD 


193 


‘Miss Henderson’ ; but next time we meet it’s up to 
you to say: ‘Jack Marsden, I’m Mildred to you !’ ” 
Without looking round, hat in hand, he swung 
open the mosquito-door and marched down the steps, 
walked to the gate, turned there and bowed — and in 
the doorway, motionless like a statue, very pale but 
with spots of bright red in either cheek, Mildred 
gazed at him, inclined her head in response to his 
bow. Then she closed the door, and Marsden de- 
parted — haunted by that last long look. 


CHAPTER IX 


marsden’s creed again 
HERE was no hint of “psychical blindness” 



when Sam found himself once more free, bereft 


of the disgraceful leg-iron. He saw all things 
with tremendous accuracy; and took rapid survey, 
block by block, as he crept home, of everybody in 
the streets, lest anyone he knew might be abroad and 
see him. His legs felt as if they were still man- 
acled. His instinct was to hide. What, he won- 
dered now, newly free from the prison, would his old 
friends think of the gaol-bird? It did not occur to 
him to ask himself how he would treat a friend who 
had been incarcerated and publicly punished for giv- 
ing a leering and familiar scandal-mongerer, who tra- 
duced a lady, one black eye and one bruised jaw. 
Nor did he, with deep philosophical peace, inform 
himself: “Now you will know who your friends 
are!” Instead he thought that he could blame none 
if he were passed by as though unseen. 

Halfway home, irked by this desire to efface him- 
self, to skulk along, he inhaled and blew forth a 
deep breath, slackened pace, and considered that he 
had done nothing criminal; he had but disturbed the 
peace when a highly genteel mayor was in office, a 


194 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


195 


man whose aim was to turn Kootenay from an “ex- 
citement” into a “married man’s town.” That was 
what it was! So Sam squared his shoulders, and 
took balm from the thought that he had, maybe, 
affronted a municipality, but had not horrified man. 
Some natural refusal to be broken — above all broken 
by a prejudice, when the reason for the prejudice was, 
as in his case, surely tenuous — some refusal to be 
broken, and a whiff of pride, as well as joy of life as 
he breathed the air, free again, made him renounce 
the apologetic air, or carriage. He threw back his 
head and swung along, meeting the eyes of every 
man who, passing by, looked at him. Those who 
recognised him as one who had been in the chain- 
gang would see that he could look in their faces, not 
in the braggart way of a vagabond who refuses to 
admit error, but in the easy way of one who has 
nothing of which to be ashamed. 

To this condition, in the rapid sequence of condi- 
tions following on his exit from prison, he had come 
when he saw Webley’s daughter, Nance, advancing. 
A woman ! He wished that the first known face to 
be encountered could have been a man’s. Next mo- 
ment he perceived a good point, veered mentally, or 
emotionally, and was glad to meet a woman first in- 
stead of a man; for a man — whether he have just 
come on to the street out of gaol or out of chapel — • 
gives a lady precedence in the matter of salutation. 
She saw him. He glanced at her, ready to be ac- 
knowledged or cut dead. If he met a man he would 


196 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


be in a quandary, but this encounter was simple. In 
another three paces the matter would be solved. 

The three paces were taken — and Nance Webley 
not only bowed but smiled, not only smiled but 
smiled in friendly welcome; also she stopped, not 
content to let him bow (a grateful bow it was too, 
pathetically so it seemed to her) and pass. 

“Oh Mr. Haig!” she said, and gave him her 
white-gloved hand. “Everyone is so angry — dis- 
gusted. I don’t want to know what your row with 
Mr. Grosset was about — it doesn’t matter — but he’s 
thick with the sheriff, and the sheriff and the mayor 
are as thick as thieves, and there it is. People say 
it’s a scandal that you wpre chain-ganged with a lot 
of fellows who had been drunk and incapable, or 
were found beating their way into the depot on the 
trains. I call it — well, I don’t know what to call it ! 
In new towns the sheriff seems to do pretty much as 
he likes.” She diverged from his case to conversa- 
tion apropos: “My father says he was in a town in 
Oregon once, and two hoboes were caught as they 
came off the rods of a freight. The sheriff was in 
bed, but a policeman knocked at his door, and he 
looked out of the window and said: ‘Who’s there?* 
The policeman said: ‘It’s me — Rafferty, the polis- 
man, with two hoboes.’ Said the sheriff: ‘Oi’m 
drunk, and Oi can’t see them. Pwhat are they 
loike?’ And the policeman replied: ‘There’s a 
long thin drink of a felly, and a little bit of a stub.’ 
So the sheriff said: ‘Put the long thin drink in the 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


197 


lock-up for a fortnight, and the little bit of a stub 
for a week!’ ” 

Sam laughed — and realised that he hadn’t laughed 
(at least not that way) for seven days. Then sud- 
denly he fell solemn. 

“But, Miss Webley,” he said with anxiety, “should 
you — er — don’t you mind being seen talking to 
me?” 

“Whatever for?” 

“Well' — won’t Mrs. Webley be worried when she 
knows you were standing talking to a man who ” 

“You don’t know my mother, Mr. Haig. And, 
if she was like that, mother and daughter would 
not see eye to eye,” and her brows went up, and her 
head came down in a slow nod. “It happens that) 
we do see eye to eye about your case, however. 
Mother can’t stand Grosset, and neither can I. She 
says she is sure that he would be the better of a little 
prison fare! I’m glad to see you, Mr. Haig, and 
to see you smiling ” 

“It’s not only because of your funny story,” he 
said. “I know that I’m smiling now. It’s the way 
you welcomed me. You’re the first person I’ve met. 
It’s tremendously reassuring to know I’m not turned ; 
down.” 

“I expect you would like to give the sheriff what 
you gave Grosset,” she said. 

“Funny you should think of that,” He remarked. 
“All the time I was in — in gaol — I kept constantly 
thinking how I would get hold of Grosset again and 


198 


,THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


give him another dose. When I came out this morn- 
ing that ambition oozed away. He didn’t seem to 
matter. All that mattered was being alive — the sky, 
the lake, and the hope that my friends would not 
turn me down. As for going to look for him to biff 
him again — why, I’m just tired of Grosset.” 

“I can understand that,” said Nance. “Well, 
once again, I’m glad to see you. I must get on. 
Come in and see us soon.” 

And there, in sight of all men, Miss Webley’s 
hand was in his for the second time. He gave her 
a salaam, as she turned away, that was a sight to see. 

“God bless her,” he said to himself, as he con- 
tinued along the side-walk. 

As he turned off from Hoskins Avenue he noticed 
someone slip into the doorway of Timpkin’s board- 
ing-house, saw a head look out again, then bob back. 
Maybe a carpenter was at work, he thought, for he 
could also see an arm wielding a hammer. But when 
he came to the tributary sidewalk that led to Timp- 
kin’s (no mere plank now, for the little gulch be- 
tween house and street was all levelled up), he had 
to swallow and swallow again, had to blink and 
blink. Lump in his throat, face beaming, he could 
have blessed the world. Those two hard-up, gay- 
hearted, though diabolically dollar-harassed people 
had nailed up a foot of white cotton with the word 

“WELCOME” 

blazoned thereon in blue wool. And just within, 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


199 


peeping from the sitting-room door, they waited to 
see the effect of their bit of bunting. 

“Hallo, you gaol-bird!” said Timpkin. 

“It’s a scandal!” cried Mrs. Timpkin. “It’s that 
fool sheriff, and that crank of a close-up-the-town 
mayor. Have you any scheme for getting level with 
them?” 

“No,” said Sam. “I did think for some days of 
wading into Grosset again. Oddly enough he doesn’t 
matter this morning.” 

Mrs. Timpkin wagged her head. 

“If it was me,” she declared, “I’d stay right in 
this town, work right up in it, lay for that sheriff, 
and get him fired some day. Yes, I would. Oh I’m 
not the kindly soul you think, looking at me that 
ways. I’d stay right here, and rustle along, and I’d 
— I’d buy up the town, and when I’d bought it up 
I’d burn the ” 

“Now, then, now then! Sssh! It’s my turn. 
Sssh! You’d do nothing of the kind,” said her hus- 
band. “The sheriff’s wife would go sick, and the 
mayor would come by a com in them tight shoes of 
his, and you’d be running around to nurse the poor 
woman, and to introduce the mayor to a corn-salve ! 
I know you.” He paused, and considered Sam 
keenly. “But all the same,” he observed, “I could 
understand Haig wanting to quit the burg — or I 
could understand it making him want to stay till the 
local papers had a heading: ‘Once in Kootenay’s 
Chain-Gang — Now Runs the Show’ !” 


200 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Wrecks the show!” snapped his wife. 

“Ssshh!” 

“That’s how I’d feel if I was him!” said Mrs. 
Timpkin. 

“Ssshh!” 

Sam laughed. 

“Whether wreck or run the show,” said he, “I’m 
going to stay, when I have such good friends.” 

Thus he shook into his place again, and later it 
eased him farther to find that there were men in 
this very house unaware of the cause of his week’s 
absence. 

“Good-day,” saluted one. “Been up in the hills?” 

“Been away on holiday or business?” another en- 
quired. 

“Sort of half and half,” he made answer to that. 

Mildred’s face came up before him, and he won- 
dered if she had heard of his plight. Should he 
tell her the cause of it? Should he tell her that 
an ass of a man had mistaken her for someone else, 
and insulted her name? Or should he, chivalric 
to the utmost, not sully her with the story? He 
knew not what to do regarding Mildred Hender- 
son. There had been something wrong in that Sun- 
day walk, something he could not put a name on. 
His instinct now was to take again the advice she 
had given at Henderson’s — to wait and see. Again 
he wondered if she knew who the girl was of whom 
he spoke — guessed that it was herself. The on- 
looker has no uncertainty, but Sam was uncertain. 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


201 


That was how he felt ! In the free world the main 
thing at present, it struck him, taking stock of his 
life, was to get back to work. 

He must drop in at Marsden’s and thank him 
for that gift of cigarettes. He had smoked them; 
and it amused him to remember how. His warder 
had come along and looked in at him through the 
grille, and he had said: “I could do with a smoke.” 

“A smoke is surely consoling,” the warder had 
replied. 

“Is it prohibited in prison?” Sam had asked. 

“Our orders,” was the answer, “are to take all 
articles from prisoners, search for concealed weap- 
ons,” — and he pattered off a list of articles to be 
specially searched for — “and to see that men em- 
ployed without the prison are not handed things 
by friends. Sometimes,” he added, “boys get a bit 
of chewing tobacco. A buddy slips it to them cun- 
ning on the street. Cigarettes too! Poor smokes, 
cigarettes. Silly smokes, I call them; but when 
they’re finished they’re finished, whereas a pipe re- 
mains. Of course if I smelt tobacco smoke I got 
to investigate. But I got a cold in my head to- 
day,” and he had moved on. Sam had required no 
further hints; he had smoked, but not too care- 
lessly, standing close up to his little barred window 
out of which the smoke veered and eddied. 

Yes, he must call on Marsden. Jingling money 
in his pocket (for pleasant is the chink of coin to 
a man who has been “up against it”) he set off 


202 THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 

upon that mission after lunch, pondering on the way 
what a queer position he was in toward Marsden. 
He recalled their first meeting on the wagon-road; 
the second, in Webley’s garden, when Marsden ex- 
pounded his views on life, gave summary of the phil- 
osophy by which he lived — or imagined he lived. A 
packet of smokes! The money value was nothing; 
the fact of the giving, and the kind thought behind 
the deed, were all. He remembered the lake pic- 
nic, and Marsden’s attitude to Mildred. But here 
was the heavy and yet simple sign, over the stables. 
Sam entered the office and asked if the proprietor 
was in. The clerk in charge glanced up at the clock. 

“Nope,” he said. “Can I do anything?” 

“No, thank you. I’ll call again.” 

“He should be back soon. Say, didn’t I see you 
in the chain-gang not long ago?” 

Sam’s eyelids drew a little together and his gaze 
was keen on the questioner. 

“Yes.” 

“What was that for?” 

O glorious West, thought Sam, where a man does 
not take opinion ready-made, but exercises his own 
capacity to read character and to decide points of 
conduct. 

“I knocked a man down, and it seems they are 
trying to make the place peaceful — so they ran me 
in!” 

“What did you knock him down for? Called 
you a son of a something, I suppose?” 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


203 


“No— not that.” 

“Excuse my asking, but Fm interested. Tried to 
steal a lady friend, perhaps?” 

“Well, insulted a lady I know,” Sam allowed; 
“or not exactly that — made a mistake, thought she 
was an old ‘flame’ of his, as he called her.” 

The clerk shrewdly studied Sam, with a sugges- 
tion of pity in his eyes. 

“And said things that — * — -” Sam continued. “Well 
—I hit!” 

“I see. You come back later on. Marsden will 
be here in less than an hour.” 

The notion came to Sam to go down to the de- 
pot, and call on Webley. He believed in Webley; 
but he wanted to make sure that his belief was not 
chimerical. Miss Webley’s views might not be her 
father’s. So he passed on along the street, cut across 
the road that ran from the smelter entrance to the 
depot, and as he walked down there he saw Mars- 
den on horseback, riding uphill toward him. They 
came level at the end of the bridge that led across 
Astley Creek — the bridge on which he and Mildred 
had crossed two Sundays ago. It was the identi- 
cal spot at which he had said good-bye to her. Mars- 
den, sitting back in the saddle, brought his horse to 
a standstill, and then settled easily to chat. 

“How do, Mr. Haig?” said he. 

“How do you do, Mr. Marsden? I have to 
thank you for a little gift that meant much to me,” 
said Sam. “I have just been to your office and left 


204. 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


word that I would call again. I can assure you I 
appreciated. How you thought to do it I don’t 
know, but I did certainly appreciate the gift — and 
the spirit behind it.” 

Marsden gloomed down on him, and then — 

“I’ll dismount,” he said. “There’s a saying to 
the effect that some folk are very big when they’re 
on horseback.” He slid from the saddle and stood 
with lines in hand. “I don’t know that good is the 
word. I owed you a debt, anyhow, for you had 
put such a face on Grosset that he was out of the 
running for as long as you. He hasn’t shown him- 
self since you lambasted him, and let me tell you, 
in case you don’t know — I didn’t see the scrap — 
that Grosset can, or could, anyhow, last I heard of 
him in that line, use his fists. Maybe he’s a bit 
slack now with his way of living. He used to say 
he could tackle any looking-for-trouble-I’m-a-son 
of-a-gun-from-Missouri person who came into his 
store celebrating. And it wasn’t bluff. Well, you 
put him out of the running. Queer thing, a woman’s 
tastes for men, according to other men. Why, I 
knew a man once — little fellow, and like most little 
fellows full of conceit — little, and mean-looking, and 
dirty. But he was the limit. He could put the 
come-hither on beauties — yes, beauties. They lost 
their heads to him.” 

But Sam was not listening to the description of 
this impossible charmer of beauties. He was put- 
ting these words of Marsden’s about a woman’s taste 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


205 


for men, and about Grosset being out of the run- 
ning, alongside of a glance given him by the clerk 
at the livery-stable when he acknowledged that a 
woman was in the case, a glance hardly noticed at 
the time but recalled now, or popping up now. And 
he had not failed to remark that gloomy and troubled 
expression on Marsden’s face when thanked for the 
spirit behind his gift. He had an unpleasant sus- 
picion that this man was deeper than he had realised. 

“You appeal to her,” said Marsden. “That’s dif- 
ferent. You’re a man of sentiment. I thought there 
was little more to you, but I take that back. But 
you’re not the man for her any more than Grosset 
— only she don’t see that exactly. She’s playing 
with the lot of us. She’ll puzzle herself up so that 
she won’t know where she is, all right, all right. 
You and Grosset were to be absent for a week. I 
don’t hold with ‘absence makes the heart grow fon- 
der.’ It depends; every proverb depends.” 

He was a conundrum. Sam did not know how to 
handle him; and for the sake of the gift of smokes 
he kept calm. After a short spell of silence — • 

“But Grosset ” he began. 

“Yes, I know,” Marsden interrupted. “A man 
like you, an admirer of flowers — I saw the way you 
pried around in Webley’s garden that day, Oh fair 
charmed! — a man like you feels bad about Grosset 
admiring where you admire, or” — he looked very 
knowing — “being allowed by the lady to admire 
maybe !” 


206 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“You don’t understand me at all, Marsden,” 
r (Marsden’s eyes jumped) ; “you don’t know your 
way through the tunnels inside my head, though you 
think you do. I was going to say that Grosset does 
not know her at all. At any rate, that’s why I 
punched him, if you care to know, instead of trying 
to theorise and piece it together. I punched him 
because he persisted in saying he’d seen me with an 
old flame of his, and it just sickened me to hear 
him talk.” 

“O — » — h!” said Marsden. “Well, yes — I see. 
It’s just like you to go and wade into a man for 
a sentiment of that kind. You didn’t think he was 
talking about her.” 

“I knew,” flared Sam. 

“All right, all right. Put it that way. You knew . 
You knew he had made a mistake, and w T aded into 
him on general principles. I do know you after all ! 
That’s you, all right, all right. That’s you! And 
if you care to know, instead of trying to theorise — ” 
he paused; he left the rest in air. “Oh, well,” he 
growled, and smiled grimly. “You go on knowing, 
Mr. Haig.” 

Sam half turned away. 

“Thank you for dropping me the smokes, Mr. 
Marsden,” he said. “That was what I wanted to 
say — and to thank you also for not being one of 
those who would cut me afterwards, because I’d worn 
an anklet.” 

Marsden laughed. 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


207 


“Pshaw !” he exclaimed. “A man like me that 
has mixed up in cattle and sheep troubles in two 
States — and that not so long ago — doesn’t think 
much of a gaol, just for the form of it. It depends 
on what you’re there for!” 

He held out his hand, and Sam took it. 

“Good-bye,” they said together. 

Then abruptly Sam wheeled. He refused to let 
Marsden see on his face any sign of doubt that 
perhaps — that perhaps — he had punched Grosset un- 
der misapprehension. That doubt rankled horribly 
as he thought of all Grosset had horribly havered 
to him, and to Timpkin; he stared stonily in 
front of him and was some distance off when 
he heard Marsden call him back. A thought had 
come to that big man as he swung to tthe sad- 
dle. 

“What made you so sure that Grosset was mak- 
ing a mistake?” he enquired when they were level 
again. “Why shouldn’t she have him on a string? 
I guess he can be amusing.” 

Sam showed a heavy countenance, and had no re- 
ply. He was irritated with this man, but he had 
larger irritations in him, more deep. He still felt 
grateful for the cigarettes, did not realise in what 
a queer spirit they had been offered. Sam could 
never have acted from a similar impulse, and lacked 
the capacity to understand. Here was an example 
of the philosopher’s comment that a mind under- 
stands only what it brings with it the power of un- 


208 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


derstanding. Marsden put up his head and laughed 
gently. 

“Well, so-long,” he said, and he spurred uphill 
in a flurry of dust, leaving Same mute, and in such 
a condition of depression that he decided to defer 
the visit to Webley. He was over-miserable to 
make visits. The sooner he got to work the better. 

He crossed the bridge and walked on toward the 
smelter. In the office window he espied a notice 
that made him more hopeful about his job: 

MEN WANTED FOR CRUSHER 
YOUTH TO STENCIL SACKS 
VACANCY FOR ENGINEER 

He shook his head the way a man does when there 
are flies about, though there were none annoying 
him at the moment. Puzzled and worried in his 
position toward other existences around him, he 
knew, in a kind of second-nature, subconscious way, 
he had to get to work again. That last announce- 
ment — “Vacancy for Engineer”- — made him hopeful 
that luck had not utterly deserted him. Maybe they 
had been unable to find anyone to take his place. 
The office, as to exterior, was a plain, unpainted 
barrack of a place, built on piles, but the interior 
was well fitted, and furnished with polished counter, 
desks, tall stools, tables and swivel chairs. Inside, 
the deafening din of the crushers sounded a trifle 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


209 


muffled. Inside, the eye had something else to look 
upon than unsightly slag-heaps. 

Sam, asking for the manager, was told to “go 
right ahead,” and was informed: “He’s expecting 
you.” So right ahead he went, opened the door of 
the room labelled “Private”; and the chief, glancing 
over his shoulder, gave a chuckle when he saw who 
entered. 

“Hullo!” he said. “Been on the drunk?” 

“No — been in gaol.” 

“What for?” 

“Knocking a man down.” 

“Oh, well!” The big man at the desk shrugged 
his shoulders. “What do you expect? Who was 
it?” 

“Grosset is his name.” 

“So! Did you give it him good? I suppose so, 
to get jugged for it.” 

“I gave him something.” 

“Good! Grosset! Huh! Started in town here 
as haberdasher; began playing with town-lots, no 
end, on this side. I know him. He’s in with the 
present ‘pull.’ No matter; there are other ‘pulls.’ 
This is a country of rival ‘pulls.’ That chain-gang 
is a scandal. The mayor tried to bring it in long 
ago for building work, and all the carpenters in 
town went on strike. He was a little premature. 
Strong union. And they were ‘kickers’ in those days. 
Unions are a nuisance in some ways, in others they 
are good. But when the boom began to drop he 


210 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


had his way and started a chain-gang — on unskilled 
work. There’s no union for shovel-stiffs! Want 
your old job back?” 

“That’s what I’m here for,” replied Sam. 

“We’ve only got a temporary hand there — over 
from the furnaces,” the manager admitted, “so ” 

Five minutes later Sam was in the power-house 
again, see-sawing back to a belief in humanity, once 
more engineer of the bucket-tramway. 

When he returned over that bridge into town 
again he was no longer at a loose end. But regard- 
ing other matters than those of the mere stoking 
and maintenance side of life, he was far from eased. 
After supper the convolutions and tormenting twist- 
ings of his thoughts were too much for him. He 
must see Mildred Henderson — as a moth must in- 
vestigate a candle. Arrayed in his best, he sallied 
forth to call on her, hoping most fervently that Math- 
ers might be absent on business, and that — better 
still — Mrs. Mathers might be gone with her hus- 
band. She often “went out” with him — to Port- 
land, Seattle, Victoria, as his business carried him. 
He came to the house on the hill, he rang the bell, 
and the Irish maid (not yet wedded for some reason, 
and still unaccountably here) opened. 

“Is Miss Henderson at home?” he asked. 

“She told me to say she was not at home,” was 
the astounding reply — whether imbecile or insolent 
mattered not. 

Sam stared. 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


211 


“She told you to say that?” 

“Yes !” with vigour. 

“I mean did she tell you to say that she told you 

to say oh!” He was almost in a stammering 

condition. He felt illiterate. His power of expres- 
sion was fogged. 

“She told me to say that she was not at home 
to you !” 

“But not like that, surely!” began Sam, and then: 
“Oh, no matter,” for this arguing with a wild Irish- 
woman in the porch was too paltry to continue. “I 
will write.” 

“Indade, ye can plase yirsilf!” she said. 

The servant problem out West is a servant prob- 
lem indeed. Articles have been written on it, books 
could be written on it, also on the savage who, coming 
in touch with the Democratic Spirit, does not rightly 
understand it, and is eventually dispensed with. The 
young woman had looked all the while as if on the 
point of slamming the door in his face — would have 
done so, doubtless, had there not been possibility 
that the altercation might continue, and to shut the 
door on him would have been to end it. 

It was just as he informed the blazing door-opener 
that he would write that there came from the in- 
terior a laugh. It was a man’s laugh. And it sound- 
ed like Grosset’s. Sam looked at the “help,” but 
she had her ignorant and exulting little head in the 
air, flaunting. He turned away, and walked down 
the path, in despondency. It was Grosset who was 


212 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


there! Feverishly he tried to be true to his div- 
inity. This proved that Grosset did know her, but 
(he clutched the argument) it did not prove that 
she was the lady of his confessions of months ago, 
the lady of whom Timpkin, reading between the 
lines, had been suspicious, the lady whose intentions 
Sam also had doubted. 

Yet Mildred, and none other, had given an order 
that he was to be told she was not at home. When 
had she given that order? Marsden said that Gros- 
set had not shown his face for a week. Was not 
the solution of the order of expulsion, maybe, that 
Grosset had only now gone to her with his version — 
some lying version — of the scrap of that Sunday? 
Was it not due to her, due to himself, to get face 
to face with her and ask why — why — why she had 
closed her door on him ? He would be content with 
no mere “Surely you know!” She must tell him, 
and in the telling much would be revealed. It was 
a tangle that could be unravelled, and would surely 
show itself in the unravelling to be comedy, not trag- 
edy. So he told himself — and wasn’t assured, 
simple Sam though he was. 

Suddenly he stopped. Turning over those details 
of his plight, he had subconsciously walked back to 
Timpkin’s. He found himself there without any 
recollection of having walked thither. But he could 
not enter; he could not settle; he could not go in- 
doors. To go within four walls would be mad- 
dening. Space was what he needed, space to think 


MARSDEN’S CREED AGAIN 


213 


in, to try to come to some comprehension of where 
he stood. 

“I feel as if I was doped!” he said to himself. 
“Doped! That’s how I feel! Doped! Doped.” 


CHAPTER X 


BALM IN GILEAD 

T HE end of his weighings and considerations 
brought him to a decision to leave the whole 
matter to Fortune. As the wise man of New 
England said: “Be at rest from seeking after your 
Destiny. Your Destiny is seeking after you.” On 
the evening of the second day of freedom from the 
chain-gang, when his stride was again normal, less 
definitely short, staccato, exactly measured, he 
climbed the hill to Webley’s flowery home. The 
Chinaman in white ducks who answered his ring 
told him to go straight through the house, as Mr. 
Webley was at work in the flower-beds; and Sam 
took his way through the peaceful, dusky, gleaming- 
floored rooms, and out into the garden at the rear 
of the house. A tenuous light was over the place, 
the last of the mountain day, a light that seemed 
to be made up of reflections from the peaks and 
from the sky. The year-old lawn in that tranquil 
hour had glamorous qualities; hints of antiquity 
and eternity lurked in the enclosure as surely as in 
any old-world garden. Dickens, in a chuckling 
phrase, commented once, regarding the family tree 
of one of his characters, that we are all descended 
214 


BALM IN GILEAD 


215 


from Adam ; and so is all the world, whether groomed 
or wildnerness, of a piece, born out of the original 
nebulae and whirl. The genius loci here, on this 
year-old lawn, with the aeon-old mountains for back- 
cloth, was as hushing and tranquilising to Sam as 
any venerable plot rolled and tended for centuries, 
and looked down upon by merely old walls. At the 
far end, with sticks and gardeners’ bass, Webley 
was busy. On Sam’s arrival he looked over his 
shoulder and suddenly struck an attitude. 

“How dare you, sir!” he cried. “Who admitted 
you? I can have no gaol-bird coming to my home !” 

“What a shame!” came the voice of Mrs. Web- 
ley. “What a shame. I say, it’s cruel to josh 
him !” 

Sam glanced round, and saw her sitting close to 
the house in the rear porch, two others with her, 
Nance the one, and the second a tall fair-haired girl, 
wearing now the non-committal expression of one not 
yet introduced. But to her Sam was duly pre- 
sented. 

“Tell us about the chain-gang,” said Webley, ab- 
ruptly, his eyes dancing. 

“Oh my dear! Perhaps ” began his wife, 

looking from Sam to their guest. But that young 
lady, Miss Walters by name (a tall girl, with bronze 
hair and graceful, unaffected poise, and eyes that 
told of capacity for fun and for seriousness), allayed 
Mrs. Webley’s doubts — and Sam’s. 

“I’m not a bit shocked,” she said, laughing. “I’m 


216 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


greatly interested. I’ve never been in a chain-gang; 
I know nothing about it.” 

“Well, I can tell you about this!” Webley 
ejaculated. “It was a crime! I don’t mean the 
chain-gang. I mean putting Mr. Haig in it.” 

Miss Walters stared. 

“I’m not joshing!” said her host. “He’s really 
been in the chain-gang.” 

Once more Mrs. Webley looked perturbed. She 
still feared Sam might be hurt at this disclosure 
to a stranger — perhaps feared Miss Walters might 
be horrified. But Nance, whose friend Miss Wal- 
ters was, reassured her mother on the latter point: 
“She doesn’t mind. Tell her about it all.” 

“It’s that mayor of ours,” Webley promptly told 
her, “and that bombastic sheriff! Imagine putting 
a man in the chain-gang who only — — huh!” He 
seemed bereft of speech. He raised his hat from 
his head, said “Huh!” again, and put his hat on. 
“He only knocked down a man who has been ask- 
ing to be knocked down for some time,” he growled 
vehemently, putting the whole trouble in a sentence. 
“By the way, Haig, I didn’t tell you — and I don’t 
suppose you’ve heard — I’m a City Father now, a 
guardian of our progressive town.” 

“Oh! Congratulations!” 

Webley bowed. 

“They are surely a sweet crowd!” He said. “One 
City Father has a lot to sell, so at the town meeting 
we decide to build the school just where his lot is. 


BALM IN GILEAD 


217 


It’s the ideal spot. At the next meeting he pro- 
poses a site for the new fire-station. Must have it. 
Just the right place. No other location suitable. 
And another City Father sells it to the city — • 
his handful of lots — at a good price too. I don’t 
see why I should be out of all that. One 
thing I can tell you is that we’ve all joshed Grosset 
about his crumpled face. It would have consoled 
you in your hard cell to have heard us enquiring 
kindly as to what he’d hit. ‘You look as though 
you’d walked into something in the dark!’ That 
sort of thing.” 

“What was the trouble?” asked Miss Walters, 
looking at Sam, who interested her. 

He cleared his throat. 

“ Cherchez la femme?” she suggested, a roguish 
twinkle in her eyes. He decided that he liked the 
Webleys’ friend. 

“I’m afraid it was all very foolish,” he replied, 
and Nance looked gravely upon him. She thought 
he affected this tone of considering his action all 
very foolish. 

“I met him,” he explained, “and he said things 
about a girl I know, so I hit — and when he got up 
I hit again. And then a man in blue came along, 
and showed me first his badge and then his six- 
shooter. It becomes all the more inane when I tell 
you that I hit this Grosset person not because he 
was maligning the girl I had in mind, but because 
he — well — er — he confused her with someone else.” 


218 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Just a kid, you are,” said Mrs. Webley. 

“And now you find he wasn’t confusing her after 
all,” suggested Miss Walters. “That should be the 
end of the story.” 

At that they all looked at nothing in particular. 
There was an air of restraint — which Webley re- 
lieved. 

“I tell you what, Haig,” he said. “You must 
stay with this town — get on the board of City 
Fathers, venerable City Fathers, and bust the mayor 
and have the sheriff booted out, invent some scheme 
!for getting Grosset to buy a hunk of land with a 
view to selling it to the city, and then move a 
resolution that will land him with a white ele- 
phant.” 

“Can a man who has been in gaol stand for elec- 
tion as one of those who play with towns?” en- 
quired Sam. 

“^h! We must find that out. I don’t know the 
law. No matter — these are just the imaginings of 
a melo-novelist gone wrong. How do you feel your- 
self?” 

“I felt hot enough to slay Grosset once, but that’s 
past. Now I feel that he doesn’t amount to a string 
of beads.” 

“That’s the way to talk!” cried Nance. “I don’t 
believe,” she was vehement in stating her belief, 
“that a man like Grosset is happy. He may get 
along, but it’s not just money that makes one happy. 
A millionaire may be the most miserable man in 


BALM IN GILEAD 


219 


the world — and I don’t think he does amount to a 
row of beads !” 

“Everyone has been very good about it,” said 
Sam. 

“Why should they be otherwise?” asked Nance. 

“They know it is all due to a whim of our mayor, 
and because that horrible Grosset is a friend of 
his.” 

“Some of them did kick,” said Webley. “It was 
brought up at our weekly meeting, but we can’t up- 
set a sentence like that once it’s passed, and if we 
had appealed in the formal way your week would 
have been over before half the forms had been filled 
in and signed.” 

“Say no more about it,” begged Sam. “All I 
care for is that my friends — people I am glad to 
consider as friends — are so ” 

“Quit!” snapped Webley. “You want neighbour 
Marsden to come in and tell you that life’s hard, 
and cut out this talk of gratitude. We’re dam — 
dern glad to see you again. I beg your pardon, Miss 
Walters.” 

Miss Walters laughed. 

“You will notice,” observed Mrs. Webley, “that 
he apologises to you. We don’t count!” 

Sam smiled, recalling a certain love-speech he had 
overheard Webley make to his wife, with something 
more forcible than a mere idiotic “damn-dern” in 
it. At any rate, one result of his miserable mar- 
tyrdom in the chain-gang was to make him more 


220 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


at home than ever in Kootenay. In Webley’s gar- 
den, as the stars came out, he recovered a sense of 
ease. The sweet reasonableness of the household 
was balm to him. These people, whether they knew 
it or not, set him on his feet again; and when, at 
a late hour, he came hammering down hill home 
his humming of a snatch of song was no bluff to 
keep himself buoyant. He was hopeful, beginning 
afresh yet again. 


CHAPTER XI 


“killed for two bits” * 


O NE day, as Sam tended his tram-plant, and 
the ore from the descending buckets was 
tipped and went roaring down the iron 
chutes to the stamp-mill, a man came strolling across 
from the offices, carrying a blanket-roll and a suit- 
case, climbed to the engine-house platform, and 
slammed out a cheery: “Good-morning, Mr. Engi- 
neer!” 

“Good-morning,” replied Sam. 

“I’m to start on at the Lanyon Mine. I guess 
I can put my blankets and grip in one of the buckets 
going up?” asked the man. 

“Go ahead,” said Sam. 

This was not the first miner he had so obliged. 
It was all a matter of use and wont. To tramp up 
the mountains to the Lanyon Mine was arduous 
enough without a roll of blankets and a suit-case. 
The man dropped his belongings into a bucket as 
it passed on its way. 

* For the benefit of readers who handle shillings instead 
of quarters: There used to be, colloquially, a “long bit” 
(fifteen cents) and a “short bit” (ten cents), terms now 
very seldom heard. “Two bits” not only survives but is 
frequently heard. Out West it is more common than 
“twenty-five cents” or “a quarter.” “Two bits” is about 
equal to a shilling — or, in the slang for that, a “bob.” 

221 


222 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Guess I’ll go up in a bucket myself,” said he. 

Then it was that East ( in the person of Sam Haig) 
and West (in the person of the minter) clashed. 
An order, in the East, is to be obeyed; but Sam 
had noticed, in the West, that it is to be read, to 
be considered, and to be looked upon rather as ad- 
vice than order; the reader of the proclamation on 
the wall decides whether to obey or not. A tang 
of frontier individuality hangs about the further 
prairie and the mountain towns. To be sure the 
smelter company had printed rules tacked up in 
various places. One was at the furnaces, prohibit- 
ing the coming beyond a certain point of any man 
not on business in that department. But men not 
on business often went there. The whole scheme, 
or such was the general opinion, was that if they 
were hurt when disobeying orders the company was 
not responsible. As for the bucket-tramway’s print- 
ed rules and regulations, there was an “order” 
against climbing on a trestle, or getting into a bucket. 
When the head engineer first showed Sam his work 
he cursorily pointed to that table of regulations on 
the wall, fulfilling his part by drawing Sam’s at- 
tention to it. “They do it sometimes,” he remarked. 
Blanket-rolls and suit-cases he had, before this, 
dropped into the ascending buckets for men. This 
was the first occasion on which anyone had sug- 
gested using the bucket-tramway as a kind of over- 
head passenger service. 

“It’s not allowed,” said Sam. 


KILLED FOR TWO BITS” 


223 


“Oh pshaw !” answered the cheerful miner. “You 
can be oiling your cranks, or looking at the water- 
gauge, and not noticing me” ; and as a bucket slipped 
round to begin the upward journey, he dropped ad- 
roitly into it, despite his rather hefty bulk, and 
smartly drew his knees up under his chin, and bal- 
anced. The bucket swayed slightly, but there he 
was already soaring away toward the first tower. 

“Watch your head at the trestle !” shouted Sam. 

“You bet you!” the miner hailed, gently lowered 
his head as he drew near the projecting arm, and 
passed safely. “If they stop sending down the ore,” 
he called, “don’t leave me stuck up. You gauge 
where I am before you shut off. I don’t want to 
be left hanging between two towers where I can’t 
climb down or . . .” he was sailing away, and Sam 
more guessed the rest than was sure of it: 
gorge up above . . . wouldn’t like . . . left hanging 
. L ., . ” and then he raised a hand, wagged it gaily, but 
carefully (not to upset his balance), in gesture of 
farewell. 

Sam saw him lower his head at the trestle on 
top of the last roll visible from the engine-house, 
and then drift from sight. He wondered how many 
times that man would have to duck and carefully 
raise his head, passing trestle-tower after trestle- 
tower. “Bit of nerve about it !” he murmured. Still, 
it was doubtless safe enough if a man was sober 
and not subject to vertigo. All he had to do was 
to sit tranquil, and lower his head from time to 


224 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


time. A fine view was to be had. It would, con- 
sidered Sam, doubtless be all right, and he went on 
with the routine of his somewhat monotonous 
work. 

When the whistle blew at noon the ore was still 
coming down, and Sam made a rough calculation 
that the man had had ample time to reach the load- 
ing platform at the Lanyon Mine. As we know, 
the buckets did not by any means go at fever heat; 
they but glided slowly. It struck him now that it 
would.have been a good plan to chalk-mark a bucket 
after the miner went up, and to have watched for 
its return. Its return would, to be sure, have an- 
nounced that the man could have not only gone up, 
but also returned; yet the chalking of a bucket was 
the only method that occurred to him (though oc- 
curring now too late) by which to make certain that 
the man had reached the top. He blamed himself 
for his lack of arithmetical interest in his work, 
considered that he should have known how long 
it took for a bucket to make the journey. He could, 
as it was, only make a rough guess by watching a 
bucket cover a section of journey and then visual- 
ising the slopes beyond, on and on, out of sight. 
“Oh, he’s surely there long ago,” he murmured. 
But though he was satisfied that sufficient time had 
passed for the journey, he was anxious to know of 
the man’s safety, to know that he had not been 
decapitated at one of the trestles, to be sure he 
had not fallen out. Sam was not comfortable about 


“KILLED FOR TWO BITS' 


225 


him; so, as the men came thronging to dinner, he 
walked over to the office. 

“I want to ’phone to the top,” he said to a clerk 
who was just leaving. 

“All right. You know your way.” 

Sam passed inside and took up the receiver. 

“Hullo!” he said. “Hullo!” Then he gave ear. 
“That the mine? . . . Yes ... yes ... no, tram- 
engineer speaking. I say, I don’t want to get any- 
one into trouble, but I’m a bit anxious. Can you 
tell me if a miner who rode up in the buckets ar- 
rived O.K.? Are you there? . . . Eh? . . . No! 

. . . My God! .. . . Is he . . . what? . . ,. Nol 
. . . My God! . . . My God! Why didn’t I stop 
him! Yes . . . yes ... I know, I know.” 

He did not go home to dinner that day. Instead 
he sat where he was, chin in hand, staring out at 
the depressing slag-heaps, the black sheds, the rick- 
ety-looking spider-work of plank bridges that spanned 
from building to building. A clerk, whose duty 
it was to remain in the office during the lunch-hour, 
overheard the hither end of the conversation and, 
with Sam’s attitude for climax to it, he realised 
what had happened and what was wrong with Haig. 
But he was young and felt unfit to minister to the 
engineer of the bucket-tram. Out he went in search 
of the chief engineer, found him in a corner of the 
unwon tedly-hushed engine-room enquiring into a 
luncheon pail, and brought him across to see Haig. 

Sam had scarcely noticed the clerk’s exit, but 


226 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


looked round when he returned with the chief. The 
latter surveyed the tram-engineer’s face with some- 
thing of the aspect of a physician. 

“It’s all right,” he said. “You didn’t do it. They 
often go up. They take the risk themselves — that’s 
all. It’s bad for you, I know; but you didn’t do 
it” 

Sam sat back, hands clenched on the table. 

“But if you’d seen him!” he broke out. “He 

was such a jolly-looking fellow ” he failed for 

further speech. 

“All right! All right! But you musn’t double 
up like this. It’s been done often.” (Occasion- 
ally” would have been more near to accurate, but 
the chief thought “often” was better at the mo- 
ment.) “There was a fellow killed once before — 
when I had your job. It made me feel bad. I 
think he’d been drinking, and he seemed to have 
lost his head going over a gorge at the top.” 

“That’s where this man fell. It’s an awful drop, 
they tell me.” 

“It’s surely a big fall, but he’s only got himself 
to blame. Say! You pull yourself together. You 
go home and eat dinner. You’ve only three-quarters 
of an hour now, and so have I. You go along.” 

Sam rose, blank of aspect, and passed like an 
automaton along the road and over the bridge into 
town. In the grass, and across the dusty road, the 
last grasshoppers were chirping, still merrily, as they 
chirped ages agone to Theocritus and his friends 


“KILLED FOR TWO BITS” 


227 


upon their way to Pyxus. Sam noted them not; or, 
if he heard them, even their thin chirpings were 
melancholy because of the living face of a dead man 
before him. He could not touch food. They won- 
dered at Timpkin’s what was wrong with him, sur- 
mised that maybe he had contracted a touch of fever, 
autumn being on the way, with the ills it is apt 
to bring to these new mountain-enclosed towns. He 
left the table and went out again, dinnerless. The 
blast of the smelter whistle at one o’clock drew 
him from his abstraction, and he arrived ten min- 
utes late at the engine-house. Perhaps he could 
have managed to start the engine a-going if no one 
had been there who could act as proxy for the work; 
but, as it happened, the chief, as much anxious about 
him as that the buckets should begin their afternoon 
drift on time, had come over to the tram-plant house. 

“You pull out,” he said to Sam. “Take to-mor- 
row off too, if you don’t feel fit. I expect it does 
fray you — having seen him. I’ll send over a man 
from the stamps to tend her. You go home.” 

Sam turned and headed again for the town, and 
on the bridge a young man, of curious appearance, 
suggestive of bland inclination toward excitement and 
capacity for calm, stepped forward, intercepting him, 
and said: “Excuse me. Are you Mr. Haig?” 

“Yes,” said Sam. 

“I’m The Kootenay News” the young man in- 
troduced himself. “I got some good copy once about 
you and discarded it, because Doctor Smythe and 


228 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


Miss Webley asked me to.” (Sam couldn’t for the 
life of him recall Doctor Smythe. He frowned. 
He considered. He suddenly remembered him as 
one of the guests at Webley’s garden-party and at 
Marsden’s picnic.) “They had me cinched,” went 
on The Kootenay News, “both of them. Doc’ 
Smythe pulled me through fever last fall, and Miss 
Webley — w r ell, she’s Miss Webley. She’s white. 
They got me to keep it out of the papers about your 
fist-fight with that guy Grosset. You owe me some- 
thing, you see? I want you to talk now. Did the 
poor feller that went up in the bucket tell you what 
he was doing it for?” 

Sam shook his head. It seemed untrue, this mak- 
ing a column out of the last crazy jaunt of the young 
man he had seen waggle a hand so cheerily a few 
hours ago. 

“Didn’t; he say he was too gol-darned lazy? 
Didn’t he say he would wrastle you if you tried to 
stop him?” suggested the reporter, trying to make 
a beginning, but only touching Sam in a sore place. 

“I should have stopped him,” said Sam, in a level 
voice, and the alert youth had a jump in his eyes, all 
attention. 

“Feels bad — Engineer cut up,” he made mental 
note. “Didn’t say anything?” he asked aloud. 
“Didn’t suggest it was for a wager, eh? Small bet — 
big bet — didn’t say anyhing like that? ‘Killed for 
two bits’ would make a dandy heading,” he mur- 
mured to himself. 


“KILLED FOR TWO BITS' 


229 


“He said nothing,” replied Sam. “He was so 
cheery. He waved his hand from the ridge just be- 
fore he disappeared. Don’t write it up. Don’t write 
it up !” he besought, realising that in talking he was 
helping to make a “story” out of the dead man. “I 
feel as if he was looking at me yet — and laughing.” 

“Say!” exclaimed the reporter, re-focussing his 
gaze, “you come along with me. We’ll say no more 
about that; but I promise you I’ll write it up touch- 
ing. I’ll write it so that if his folks see a copy it 
will give them the relief of tears. You come with 
me. I know what you want. You’re too sensitive. 
Funny — you knocked Grosset’s ear into the top of 
his head only the other day, and yet this frazzles 
you. Temperament; that’s what it is. I got a 
recipe for a cocktail that will delight you for once, 
and kill you if you stay with it. It goes down the 
sciatic nerve like a song, and into the head like a 
polka. I’ll fix you up. You come with me.” 

He wheeled and led off, Sam at his side. He be- 
lieved in his capacity to make a “story” out of what 
he had heard already, so was not too greatly down- 
cast. 

“Here we are,” he said. “Come in here, and 
let me feed you a drink — and give thanks you ain’t 
in a dry town.” 


CHAPTER XII 


A “get-rich-quick” chapter 

I T was a somewhat stunned Sam Haig who wan- 
dered out from Timpkin’s to the little library 
that afternoon, impelled thither by some instinct, 
some hope of winning back (or forward) to a solid 
footing in the world by aid of a book. As in the 
turning of a kaleidoscope the little bits of glass slide 
and click into new positions, somewhat so moved be- 
fore him many faces. Mildred Henderson, and 
Marsden, and the dead miner; the scraggy, cynical, 
kindly reporter; sweet little Nance Webley, of whom 
the newspaper man had given him a wondrous 
glimpse; and Doctor Smythe, by the same wizard 
drawn back again out of what seemed a distant past 
(for the chain-gang episode had made everything 
that befell before far away) — these all came before 
him. Events and disclosures had crowded one upon 
another during these last days. Events and disclosures 
— and suppositions — dazed him somewhat. It came 
to him that Mildred Henderson, who cast so great 
a spell on him, was not in his life at all, was out of 
his orbit. A sense of the sacredness of life had come 
to him on hearing that the cheery miner was dead — 
the sacredness, the antiquity, the brevity. On that 
day he could have killed not so much as a fly. And 
230 


A “GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


231 


deep down, within that mood, was resentment against 
Mildred, a resentment against her way of making 
persiflage out of everything. 

He was indeed an interesting case, as the Kootenay 
N ews man had noticed. Less than a fortnight ago 
he was (in Marsden’s word) “lambasting” Grosset; 
to-day he was thrown out of gear because a man he 
knew nothing of (beyond that he had a cheery face) 
was dead. Self-condemnation had much to do with 
his condition ; for on and on at the back of his mind 
persisted the thought that he should have refused 
the man his ride. There! That was it! That was 
the crux of his anguish over the affair. And then 
there was Mildred Henderson. He was at sixes and 
sevens with her. Sinuous, smiling, provocative, she 
was in his mind’s eye all the time. 

The library was no grand edifice. There were 
those, indeed, who called it the “library shack.” It 
contained a little room with a table on which lay the 
weekly picture papers and a few monthlies, and be- 
hind that a larger room with book-laden shelves on 
all sides. The librarian was the only occupant, al- 
most hidden behind a roll-top desk in a corner, the 
back of the desk outwards, so as to make it serve 
also the purpose of a partition, the space behind 
which was apology for a librarian’s office. Sam 
wandered, round, looking at the backs of the books, 
and between him and them drifted the cheery miner 
and Mildred Henderson, and Grosset and Marsden, 
and within him was a sense of tanglement. 


232 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


A little to his amazement, a blunted kind of amaze- 
ment, he saw a Horace on a shelf and took it out 
in memory of college days when he had learnt what 
had been, it seemed, of scant service later. But he 
thrust it back again. The classics only served to 
remind him of his late quest for employment as one 
of the “unskilled.” Te semper anteit saeva Necessi - 
tas he recalled, and then wondered if perhaps it was 
serva and withdrew the volume again to verify. But 
his eye falling upon “ . . . vitae summa brevis spem 
nos vetat incohare longam! } he replaced the book, 
adread lest tears should come. Certainly he was un- 
strung. He was as a ship without a rudder, or with- 
out compass. 

One wall was stocked with volumes on mineralogy, 
and he glanced at these — especially the ones with 
titles that informed him of his ignorance. There was 
one on the way to file claims, and all about staking, 
and registering, and proving assays, about the rights 
of miners, their legal position over nuggets, over veins 
of precious ore, over alluvial deposits. 

This time Sam conned in an absent fashion, dip- 
ping into the pages, and was arrested by the phrase, 
centred in a page : 

“GOLD IN PLACE” 

He glanced down the page, and saw it dotted with 
the same phrase again, in italics: “gold in place }) ; 
and farther on was “mineral in placed He com- 


A "GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


233 


menced to read purely as an abstraction from his 
sensitiveness regarding that life suddenly shut out, 
and from other matters too, it would appear, by 
the way that Mildred and Nance Webley, Grosset 
and Marsden haunted him — Nance coming into his 
mind persistently, as though in contrast with Mil- 
dred. After finishing the chapter, standing before 
the shelves, he carried the book to the sitting-room 
and set it on the table, drew out a chair, clamped him- 
self down studiously to re-read certain pages again 
with high concentration. Concentration was re- 
quired, because between the lines so far there had 
been all sorts of interjections, such as: “It’s im- 
possible that she knows the truth. If she knew why 
I hit Grosset she would never have given the order 
that she was not at home to me.” Or again: “I 
shall write to her — I shall ’phone to her — demand- 
ing explanation.” Or again, at long last: “No, I 
won’t! I should show some proper pride!” There 
was, as you see, need for concentration to read about 
mineralogy. 

The miracle happened. He succeeded. He more 
than succeeded; for after this second — and keen' — 
perusal he rose, returned the book to its shelf, and 
departed with a new and resolute step. Behold 
Sam Haig another creature ! Coming to the Timp- 
kins’ boarding-house he knocked on the private sit- 
ting-room door. None answered. There was no 
one there. So he passed upstairs; but Timpkin, be- 
low, in the kitchen or dining-room, had heard the 


234 , 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


knocking and came to enquire, craning upward. 

“I want to have a chat with you,” said Sam, 
mysteriously. 

“Sure,” replied Timpkin. “Come in here. I saw 
there was something the matter. Come in here,” 
and he led the way back to the sitting-room, thrust- 
ing a chair toward Sam. “Feeling bad? In trouble? 
What’s the name to it?” 

“Sit down !” said Sam forcefully, and when Timp- 
kin had obeyed, astonished at his boarder’s new 
vigour, the young man seated himself. “You have 
done something in mining?” he asked. 

“I have,” said Timpkin. 

“All kinds?” inquired Sam. 

“Well,” answered Timpkin, “I’ve never gone in 
for turning over tailings like a Chinaman, but I’ve 
a prospect to my name on the main range, and have 
put in my assessment on it — or swore to it, anyhow; 
and I have washed for gold once or twice in my span 
of days,” he shook his head, “and put too much of 
what I got on the creek-bars over the hotel-bars, too; 
but that was before I met Mrs. Timpkin.” 

“Look here,” said Sam, “I have a scheme. It 
seems to me, reading up about the business, that if 
one finds certain minerals what is called in place one 
can file a mineral claim and go to work.” 

“That’s right,” Timpkin agreed. “That’s the 
simple fact.” But he stared wide-eyed at Sam, won- 
dering if it was fever or really a scheme that had 
assailed his curious boarder. 


A “GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


235 


“Further,” continued Sam, “it doesn’t matter what 
the first assay is like so long as the mineral is there — 
it doesn’t matter how rich nor how poor?” 

“Sure,” replied Timpkin. “If it’s rich you’ll go 
on working. If it’s too poor to work you’ll just nat- 
urally quit.” 

“Exactly,” said Sam, “unless you can sell to some- 
one else.” 

Timpkin gave a laugh. 

“That too is done,” he said, staring at Haig, a 
trifle more strained. “It is generally done by what 
is known as salting . It can be done otherwise, by 
plain lying, by selling out to a man by showing him 
mineral that came from somewhere else altogether. 
But if he wants to look at your prospect — then you 
salt it, as I tell you. But who’s the sucker you’ve got in 
your mind? And where’s your prospect, anyhow?” 

“I’m not thinking of that,” replied Sam, showing 
irritation. “Of course I’ve heard of that sort of 
thing! This is something new I’ve got. Tell me 
this, before I go any further: I heard somebody say 
that this State is rich in minerals. One man told me 
it is possible even to get a kind of lead-poisoning 
from drinking from some creeks when the water is 
low.” 

“It may be so,” said Timpkin. “Or it might be 
something else. A low creek that has maybe a dead 
coyote in it somewhere above ain’t healthful, but 
I’ve heard them say you can get lead-poisoned that 
way too.” 


2 36 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“And sometimes you might be able to wash gold 
in a creek — not enough to pay, but just to show it’s 
there, although too slightly to work as a financial 
proposition?” 

“Well, I guess if a loco man cared to wash the 
little odd handfuls of dust in Astley Creek, for ex- 
ample, he’d find a few grains,” replied Timpkin. 

“And if one washed the banks would there be ” 

Timpkin looked troubled. 

“You might find something if you were crazy 
enough to spend dollars on getting cents,” he said. 
“Say, Mr. Haig — hadn’t you better go up to bed 
and let me ask Mrs. Timpkin to have a look at you? 
Don’t you feel your pulse kind of ’ 

Sam gave a forlorn laugh. 

“No, no,” he said. “Look here — I’m not light- 
headed. Listen. In prospecting you look for what 
are called floats, don’t you, and then prospect on to 
find where they’ve come from?” 

“If you find ’em! Sure!” 

“Then do you think that possibly right in Koote- 
nay here, if one looked for it, one could find any 
precious mineral — in rock or in sand? I don’t mean 
in quantities to pay for working, but ” 

“What’s the game?” asked Timpkin; for Sam’s 
manner, he decided at last, was neither of a man 
crazy nor of a man fevered. He drew his chair 
closer. 

Quietly the scheme was disclosed, and when Sam 
finished Timpkin rose with an air of forced calm. 


A “GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


237 


“I’m your experienced mineralogist,” he said. 
“But you want a legal man on this — a man we can 
rely on, who will come in with us, not play against 
us, and who is in with the city ‘push.’ Now there’s 
a hotel proprietor in town here — he’s done some 
placering too, in his time but he was trained as a 
lawyer. Franklin, of ” 

“ The Grand W ester nf }> 

“Of course — you know him. I remember you told 
me once how he advised you when you were nearly 
broke. Look you here, Mr. Haig. We’ll go down 
and pow-wow and confer with Franklin. He won’t 
give away this stunt even if he won’t come 
in on it. He’s a bit of a wag, and I guess he’s 
liable to come in, that is if he sees the legal side has 
any grip to it at all.” He stepped to the top of the 
stairs and hailed: “Caroline! Caroline! I’m go- 
ing out on a bit of business.” 

“Whatever is it?” she called back. 

“With Mr. Haig,” he answered. “He’s got a bit 
of business he wants witnesses to. We’ll be home 
later on. Come along, Haig, and say — don’t you 
talk about it on the streets walking down.” 

Kootenay wore a different aspect to Sam now. 
These strong, shoulder-swinging men, these slight, 
lithely-tripping men; these powdered young ladies 
carrying chatelaines — they all seemed people of a 
world he looked on at. Not that he felt divorced 
from them. All was changed because he had a 
scheme. And doubtless all had their schemes. At 


238 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


the corner post-office he glimpsed the folks before 
the wickets, taking turn for letters — A to F, G to M, 
M to P, P to Z — all leading their own lives, all 
maybe with schemes. In the vestibule those who had 
received letters opened them and read, stepping a 
step at a time to the door, being dodged round by 
those who entered. Perhaps they were reading about 
schemes, or perhaps they were reading love-letters. 
Better were schemes than love episodes, if love only 
meant tangling oneself up, getting into a maze, not 
knowing where one was. 

Crossing Dawson Street it looked to him like a 
street in a dream, but a very clear dream — with 
its business signs, its revolving barbers’ poles in glass 
cases on the side -walk’s edge, its throng coming and 
going. The mountains stood to West, their great 
bases fanning out, and bits of smelter dump insult- 
ing them. To East the bluffs swept round, tawny 
in the sun-glow, ending the direct view. Suddenly 
it struck Sam that any of these people who came and 
went might be dead in half an hour. He might be ! 
And here he was scheming to make dollars, to make 
dollars quickly, in approved American manner — if 
possible ; and he was doing it all in a kind of trance, 
doing it because it was the thing to do, despite the 
looming Reaper, because in a world of dollar-hunting 
there had entered his mind (at a moment when the 
dollar was far from it) a scheme. 

Halfway down Hoskins Avenue he caught sight 
of two girls — petite Nance Webley and her tall fair 


A “GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


239 


friend. They bowed in passing, and as he acknowl- 
edged their salutation he considered what a sweet 
nature Miss Webley had. He had to tell Timpkin 
all about meeting her on the morning he came out of 
gaol, how she stopped, what she said. Timpkin 
made no comment, just walked along, head sideways, 
staring aslant at Sam as if he thought him a likeable 
and interesting imbecile, a kind of inspired idiot. He 
knew the story of the assault on Grosset, or perhaps 
it should be said, to avoid possible shadow of mis- 
statement, that he knew a story — or a version of the 
story. He knew it as told him by Sam Haig; and 
only a kind of courtesy kept him from expressing his 
private view of it. He had not taken it upon him- 
self to suggest that the young woman was very likely, 
most probably (he was willing to bet on it that she 
was) the same girl that Grosset had maundered 
about on that veranda of his. 

“It’s as plain as plain,” he had said to himself. 
“Here’s Sam Haig after the same identical old flame 
of that son of a gun. You’d think he would tumble 
to it.” 

Sam was “tumbling to it.” It was his “tumbling 
to it” that was the chief cause of his misery to-day. 
His nerves were frayed thereby, and the death of 
the cheery miner had broken down a man over-tense. 
What made Timpkin stare as he did now, however, 
was to hear Sam’s easy tones in speaking of Nance 
Webley’s goodness. 

“This feller,” mused Timpkin, “is sure crazy. He 


240 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


don’t understand anything. He tells how a girl 
treats him white as if it was nothing, and he gets 
himself into the chain-gang all over the head of an- 
other girl who would have anybody on a string. 
Beats me! And by the look of him he would, if 
he could, cough out more details about his hanging 
after that fee-male that would let any man but him- 
see that the whole proposition is a two-spot. That’s 
what gets my goat!” That, however, was his pri- 
vate opinion. He didn’t say all that. “Oh, them 
petticoats! Gee-whiz!” he ended his thoughts, and 
unconsciously spoke the last words. 

“What did you say?” asked Sam. 

“I said ‘Gee-whiz!’” 

“What about? Our scheme?” 

“Nothing. Here’s the Grand Westsrn , and they 
say God looks after fools and kids.” 

Alexander Franklin remembered Sam. It was 
not necessary to reintroduce these two. Having 
shaken hands with Timpkin, Franklin turned to the 
younger man with: “You went to his boarding- 
house, then — and you’re still there!” 

“We want a private corner to talk,” said Timpkin. 

“Come over here,” replied Franklin, and led the 
way to a corner of his front sitting-room, the big 
half-hall place, where guests can sit in rows and look 
out at the people going past, and be looked at by 
them as if they were in a glass case, on show. But 
Sam had said no more than a few words when Frank- 
lin interrupted with: 


A “GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


241 


“It’s not a quiet corner you want. It’s my private 
room. Come upstairs.” 

An hour later Timpkin and Sam came forth from 
the Grand W estern wearing an air so greatly of' 
studied blankness that an acute observer might have 
surmised they were hopeful about the value of some 
secret they shared. 

During the next day, while Sam was at work (for 
he forced himself back to the tram-engine-house, 
determined to refuse to allow anyone to ride up in 
the buckets, if anyone again purposed to do so), 
Timpkin and Franklin strolled in the environs of 
Kootenay as though taking constitutionals and ad- 
miring the flora, up and down, to and fro. Now and 
then they picked up bits of rocks, tossed them away, 
and pretended, lest watched, that they were mak- 
ing pot-shots at chipmunks. They even scrambled up 
and down the steep banks of Astley Creek like rol- 
licking schoolboys. A second day they behaved in 
the same queer way — and on the third entered 
the Government office in Dawson Street, accompanied 
by Sam, and three mineral claims were duly regis- 
tered, in the names of Franklin, Timpkin, and Haig. 

Mr. Derwent, the registrar (he had made one in 
Marsden’s trial trip with the first motor-boat on 
the lake) , was a man accustomed to many twists and 
turns. One does not act as a registrar, and that sort 
of thing, without observing many stratagems for 
skinning. But here was something new. 'The assay 
of the finds placed before him was of no more value 


242 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


than salt — but it was an assay. It took him all the 
time of registering the claims to puzzle out the sense 
of it; for he knew there must be some sense in it. 
These three men were not characters out of Alice in 
W onderland. It was when he spread out the town- 
plan on his desk that he, as they say, “cottoned” to it. 
Franklin’s claim was staked out on the hill above 
Kootenay — where it was suggested that the water- 
works should be; he had a piece of rock he called 
galena to show — there was lead in it; there was 
silver. He spoke in glowing accents of his hope that, 
with opening up, he might even chance on pockets 
with gold — “like what they have struck on at the 
Lanyon.” Derwent listened to this, leaning on his 
desk, and looked up at Franklin from under tangled 
brows then without a word thrust him the requisite 
papers to fill in. Next door to Franklin, as it were, 
Timpkin had found gold. 

“This,” remarked Derwent, “is not such a rich 
prospect as the one you Have for sale up in the moun- 
tains.” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Timpkin. “That re- 
mains to be seen.” 

Sam filed a claim alongside of his landlord, but 
closer to town, and for him Derwent had a long, 
knowing look. 

“I see you’re planning to get even with Grosset,” 
he said. “I don’t know how it will work, and I don’t 
know who has given you the tip.” 

“Tip?” asked Sam. 


A “GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 243 

“Oh, come!” Derwent wagged his head. 

“We’re in the dark,” said Franklin. “What is it?” 

“You’re surely not utterly in the dark,” declared 
Derwent. “You have some glimmerings. You per- 
haps don’t know who is to play with which bit of 
land, but you do know that this strip is to come into 
the town sooner or later, and it will be wanted, and no 
other strip will do.” 

“Well,” said Sam, “we allow we know that much. 
But where does Grosset come in?” 

“I’ll tell you then, seeing you don’t know,” Der- 
went answered. “It will make you happier. We are 
going to take all that into the town-limit, and Grosset 
was to buy the lots and — well, ’nough said.” 

For those present enough was said. One recalls 
all that Webley had let out regarding the pickings 
of the “City Fathers.” Grosset’s turn was coming 
to get his plum out of the town; he was to buy for 
himself the bit of land on which Sam, it appeared, 
had found “mineral in place,” and sell it to the City 
Fathers when the scheme for the new electric light 
power-house should be tabled. 

“I don’t object personally to you fellows butting 
in,” said Derwent, laughing. “They are just playing 
with the town. They see the end of boom, and the 
settling down to a steady existence, and so they are 
determine to feather their nests. If I wasn’t the 
registrar I would join in with you, to see if I could 
not find mineral on the one bit you’ve left that they 
might want to play with. I expect you’ve got the 


244. 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


legal side all right,” he added. “There may be some 
way of firing you off as three conspirators. Good- 
bye, sports, and good luck to you !” 

Sam was in ecstasy. In the corridor outside he 
even thumped his partners’ backs and chuckled: 
“Grosset; Grosset, by heck! And I never knew. 
Say! It’s a sign that we’ll pull it off. Say! This 
is my Destiny!” 

They still talk of it in Kootenay. The little affair 
is history. They tell of these three frauds bucking 
the other frauds. They tell of these three frauds 
shovelling and washing, digging and shovelling 
afresh. They tell of how old-timer prospectors 
came to watch them and, leaning on the fence they 
put up, roared with delight on seeing them solemnly 
extracting microscopic grains of gold from mountains 
of earth. Franklin, up above, was on a seam of rock, 
and made the town hysterical by threatening to use 
dynamite. They talked of it in the hotel sitting- 
rooms; it was discussed by the man with his head 
back and his chin soaped, and the man bending over 
him scraping, in every barber’s “joint”; it was dis- 
cussed at “At Homes.” It was, in a word, the talk 
of the town. 

“If these three smart Alecks pull it off,” was the 
opinion at the street-corners, “there’s liable to be 
some law brought in to keep anybody from ever be- 
ing able to do it again — unless the law-makers think, 
maybe, they might try it themselves somewhere else 
where folks won’t be wise to it.” 


A "GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


245 


“It’s only a smart fellow would hit the notion; and 
I say good luck to him/’ most men summed up. 

“The three rogues,” as they were called by the 
City Fathers, were (in the word for the next move- 
ment) “approached.” The newspaper reporter — 
Higgins, he of the devastating cock-tail that might 
buck you once, but would kill you if persisted in — 
danced on one leg with sheer joy. Here was a 
“story,” in his estimation, to cause every man to buy 
the News . It seemed that all three were affable be- 
yond description, when “approached.” 

“You go ahead,” they said. “We don’t want to 
stand in the way of the town. You turn the whole 
strip into town-lots, if you like.” 

But how can the town-planners turn into town-lots 
land that is being shovelled and re-shovelled, washed 
and re-washed — and is filed as mineral land? When 
one of the City Fathers, losing his temper, used 
threats and said he would agitate and have the Gov- 
ernment get on to the scandal and boot them off, he 
was told to go right ahead. “Larkin Gets Heated. 
The Noble Three Keep Cool,” wrote Higgins for 
the News . But the incident took a turn toward the 
best by the town offering each man twelve thousand 
dollars for the surrender of his rights. 

“Stay with it,” counselled Sam. “I saw Grosset 
to-day. He looks like Mephistopheles. I tell you 
Destiny is in this.” 

So they demanded fifteen thousand. Then came 
talk of arbitration; but Webley, a City Father not 


246 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


unknown to us, had a friendly interest, if not mone- 
tary, in the matter. He moved a vote to compro- 
mise, to offer them fourteen thousand, and also, 
dropping casually into the Grand Western for a 
cigar, he murmured to Franklin: “If I were you 
I’d close with the offer you’ll get to-morrow.” 

“Yes, it is a pleasant evening,” said Franklin. 
“You would?” he murmured. 

“Sure. They’re in a hurry.” 

They were, as a matter of fact. There were 
others with much to reap on that slope and creek- 
side. They wanted the reservoir to be built; they 
wanted to set up the electric light station, to utilise 
the force of the creek. And on the morrow the 
three closed with the city’s offer. It would have been 
too blatant then, publicity having been brought to 
the wedge of earth, for Grosset to buy the ground, 
and the city to buy it back again anon. Grosset dared 
not offer to buy. There are limits to “gall.” There 
are also limits beyond which enquiries are demanded 
by the most cheerful and lenient and humour-per- 
ceiving of town-folk. 

The city purchased from the three outsiders — 
and that was all. But they were in the public eye 
ever after. It was realised that there were three 
more men of political turn in town than had been 
imagined, three more claimants for civic honours, 
three more men fired with the public spirit, with the 
interest of their fellows, and of their country, at 
heart. They had the right stuff in them. 


A “GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


247 


Leaning back in his chair in the private sitting- 
room, Timpkin, after his return from the bank on 
that day of his life, leant loose, slack — as one who 
has longed for rest, and won it at long last. 

“Now I get out,” he said to Sam. “This little 
wad will remove us. I hear there’s a boom on in 
Reno — and that’s where we’ll go, Mrs. T. and I, 
and maybe we’ll make good there. What one needs 
is just the initial capital. We’ve got to leave this 
hutch on Bunyan Avenue anyhow, and we may as 
well go to some town where money is circulating 
good.” 

“Why must you leave?” asked Sam. 

“Bugs !” replied Timpkin. “Have you never seen 
them?” 

“I have, as a matter of fact,” said Sam, laughing, 
“but I didn’t tell you, as I thought you had troubles 
enough.” 

“Tell me!” murmured Timpkin. 

Franklin, on whom they called later, too gay to 
sit still, advised Timpkin to desist from boarding- 
houses and to go in for produce-raising. 

“Here?” enquired Timpkin. “Here — where the 
Chinamen can sell a cabbage for about nothing?” 

“You wait a bit,” Franklin advised. “All we 
want is a produce-raiser or two on the town council, 
.and the Chinks will get the tip either to up-prices or 
to pull out. This little episode has interested me in 
the public good and weal, so to speak. That Innes 
fellow, who has a good-going fruit-ranch down the 


248 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


lake, should go on the council. He’s got dough, and 
he’d have a pull, and the say-so. I feel I could learn 
the ropes myself.” 

As for Sam — Franklin’s notion had been at the 
back of his own mind for many moons, and, his dol- 
lars safely in the bank, he scanned the Kootenay 
News under the heading “Land for Sale.” He had 
had a glimpse of a fruit-ranch once, that day of 
Marsden’s picnic, just a glimpse between the tangled 
branches of the foreshore. But it had remained with 
him. 

“I’ve thought of that myself,” he said. 

“Well, if you ever get to the verge of acting I’ll 
go shares,” said Franklin. “If I had a thousand or 
two in a going concern of a fruit-ranch — no mere 
home, supporting itself, but a live ranch with a mar- 
ket at its doors — all the more incentive to me to get 
elected sanitary inspector and find the Chinks’ village 
up there unsanitary, and a menace to the water- 
works !” 

“So you aspire to civic honours!” said Timpkin. 

“And emoluments,” replied Franklin. 

******* 

“I feel,” said Sam to himself, as he laid his head 
on the pillow that night, “as if I am getting into the 
«wim at last”; and in his dream he saw Grosset elec- 
trocuted, and had a duel with Marsden for posses- 
sion of Mildred Henderson, in which Marsden fell; 
and then Sam got into a train with Mildred and she 


A “GET-RICH-QUICK” CHAPTER 


249 


•turned into Nance Webley on sitting down; and they 
looked out of the car-window at a depot and read the 
name on it — “North Pole”' — and got out to look at 
the pole and found themselves in New York; and 
when he turned to Miss Webley to express astonish- 
ment she had changed into Miss Walters. But 
dreams are often like that. 


-PART III: GRAZIOSO 


CHAPTER I 

THE FRUIT-RANCH 

T HERE is a tragic (or a poignant) note to be 
dropped a moment in this sunny book, but per- 
haps it will do no harm. Life is not all amus- 
ing hardship, buoyant hope, jolly triumph; even un- 
der skies of lapis-lazuli, of two men working in a 
field (as the Scripture says) one is taken and another 
left; and if the one who is left cared for the other 
he is silenced by the Mystery — and the sky is blurred; 
for he has lost a friend. Down Kootenay Lake, at 
Ten Mile Point, there had been for some time a man 
called Irvine making a home for his wife, and she 
had died while that home was a-making. It is a long 
way from Kootenay to Taxeda, Illinois, and she had 
only sufficient strength to hold on till he got back in 
response to a telegram — and then she died in his 
arms. He came back again but found that, whatever 
way he looked at it, he could not stay on his ranch 
home. If she had ever seen the place, lived in it her- 
self, belike the thought that she was no longer there 
would have been too much for him; he would have 
wanted to leave because of that. After his return 
250 


THE FRUIT-RANCH 


251 


he discovered that he must leave because she had 
never seen it. He had been building and clearing 
and making a home only for her. 

He heard from Franklin that Sam and Timpkin 
were looking for a ranch, and came to them at the 
boarding-house on Hoskins Avenue one day to say 
that his was on the market. 

“It’s a beautiful place,” he said. “You go down 
and see it, and make me an offer. You’ll find me at 
the Grand Western. Nothing wrong with it. It’s 
a peach. I’m only pulling out because — well, it’s a 
bit lonesome.” 

Next day, in Franklin’s motor-boat, they churned 
down to view the prospect, and realised it was what 
they wanted, realised also that it was hardly the spot 
for a man with anything on his mind. 

“Yes, siree,” said Timpkin, “I can understand 
that man Irvine wanting to pull out. If Mrs. Timp- 
kin happened to pass in her checks ahead of me I 
don’t mind telling you I couldn’t stay around in a 
lonesome place like this. It ain’t as if one was liv- 
ing in time down here at all. It is surely as if one 
was in Eternity already. I’d get it into my head 
that it was always to be like this — me here, her some- 
where else. When you’ve had your ups and downs 
with a woman and know every crease in her face — 
no siree,” he broke off, “I can understand that Irvine 
couldn’t stand it.” 

“Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum taber - 
nas regumque turris” Sam recalled from his college 


252 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


days and a recent random reading in the library. 
“O be ate Sesti, vitae summa brevis spent nos vet at 
incohare longam” he might have murmured. The 
words came to his mind, and those others of the 
shears that “slit the thin-spun life.” In that quiet 
neighbourhood the slight wind in the tree-tops (a 
mere whisper) and the lapping of the waves (a mere 
murmur here) seemed to be pitched in a key for 
threnodies. In the vim of life one failed to per- 
ceive; the ear was not attuned; but at a hint of death 
it seemed there went on always, in the voices of na- 
ture, loud or low, an elegiac note, a gentle lamenta- 
tion. He had heard the same note in the light winds 
among the trees at Timpkin’s door on the evening 
of the day the miner crashed from the bucket. He 
heaved a sigh. 

Together they stood silent, looking round the 
scene, and it was one of great beauty. Natura Be- 
nigna and Natura Maligna, it has been said, walk 
hand in hand on the one mountain-side. But if we 
only knew all perhaps we would not make them two, 
and after all (despite our terms of severance) they 
are one — and benign. The woods were a fringe of 
green and gold and scarlet along the blue lake side, 
beyond the border of the beach, Indian Summer be- 
gun. The opposite mountain surged skyward in 
noble rolls, feathered with firs, decked with stately 
pines. The cold blue treeless crests broke out high 
above and stood stately in the midst of a sky like a 
clear crystal globe. 


THE FRUIT-RANCH 


253 


After that spell of silence it was Timpkin who 
spoke. 

“It’s sure a peach of a place,” said he, “to make 
a home in with a partner, and friends droppin’ down 
the lake to visit now and then; but with nothing but 
the lapping of the water all day, and the stars above 
the trees all night — — I tell you what: if I was that 
Irvine man I’d start in hollering like a kid in a dark 
room for somebody to come. We ain’t going 
to ” he paused. 

“Take advantage of his desire to get away,” sug- 
gested Sam. 

“Put it there,” said Timpkin, and held forth his 
bony hand. “Aye-heigh-ho !” His gaze roved 
round. 

“The way I look at this fruit-ranching,” he broke 
out, “is like this: it ain’t as remunerative as politics, 
which is of course the nulli secundum game. No- 
body expects any visible means of support to touch 
invisible politics. It ain’t as remunerative as buying 
and selling town-lots, even if you haven’t seen the 
lots you’re selling, apart from the plan in the estate 
office; and of course apples ain’t as remunerative as 
gold-mines — which come after politics and after 
town-lots. But a man has got to live somewhere, 
and if the garden of his home, so to speak, can pay 
for wear and tear — well, it’s more than hotel-run- 
ning does. It’s a wonderful world, and wonderful 
what a man can do when he feels his home is safe 
anyhow. I guess I’ll have more faith in apple-trees 


254 


.THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


around me in my home than hard-eating boarders. 
[That’s looking at it at the worst.” 

“Look at it at the best,” suggested hopeful Sam. 

“No, sir!” ejaculated Timpkin. “I looked at 
hotel-running that way- — and it was hotel-running 
all right. It was nothing but dead heats from the 
kitchen around the tables, feeding them gorging 
shovel-stiffs! Anyhow, your apple-trees can’t sud- 
denly pull up their roots and skedaddle just when 
they’re due to hand over their keep and maybe a 
few cents margin. Why, man, don’t look at me like 
that! I’m right hopeful about it all. We may pull 
off half what we’re planning to pull off. Always 
scheme high! Anyhow, here’s a home at last. Yes, 
sir, here’s a home at last ! Here’s what we’ve want- 
ed. No more running from the kitchen to the din- 
ing-room feeding guys who eat the profit while you’re 
running. No more acting as half-cook half-waitress 
for Mrs. Timpkin. What used to get my goat was 
the way she had to hustle too.” 

“Never mind now,” said Sam. “Your goat is 
dead.” 

In that frame of mind they chugged back to Koo- 
tenay and sought out Irvine again. 

“Well?” said he. 

“We like it,” said Timpkin. 

“You can have it for what I paid,” answered Ir- 
vine. “And that’s three thousand.” 

Less Quixotic men than these two “rogues,” Timp- 
kin and Sam Haig, would have beaten him down — 


THE FRUIT-RANCH 


2 55 


or at the best might have given him what he asked. 
But it is one thing to butt-in upon a town’s affairs 
and take pickings, without being a member elected 
by the people, with the ancient prerogative, to do 
so; and quite another thing to take advantage of a 
stricken man’s melancholy. So they behaved like 
fools in books, or shall we say like lovable persons 
in real life? There are men and women like that, 
wise or unwise. They told him he must make some 
profit on the sale, and forced him to take five thou- 
sand. The blase man of affairs may smile, but thus 
it was. 

Sleeping partner Franklin, walking round the place 
with Sam and Timpkin, about a fortnight later, broke 
out with: “Well, the original owner left no spirit 
of sadness behind. It’s just peace here — just plumb 
peace.” 

“You bet you!” agreed Timpkin, and led on to 
a semi-cleared patch where his one-time waiter and 
chamberman and his one-time cook were now fur- 
ther burning and clearing. Roots of felled pines, 
set alight, spluttered with blue flames on the borders 
of the ranch and an aromatic haze of smoke hung in 
the still air. “This Chinese cheap labour,” Timpkin 
explained, “cuts two ways. What is cheap labour 
in the eyes of the Occident is well-paid labour in the 
eyes of the Orient. Here are Sing and Tom laying 
up treasure for themselves. On your uppers in the 
Western States is on velvet in Canton. Queer fel- 
lows, Chinks. Imagine Tom being with me all this 


256 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


time and never telling me that he could garden as 
well as cook. What’s the name,” he inquired, turn- 
ing to Sam, whom he looked upon as encyclopaedic, 
“for this here system — this here system of giving 
them each one row of trees out of a dozen and 
them tilling the lot for the profits of their own 
row?” 

“Feudal, I should think,” said Franklin. 

“Yes, I should think feudal would be the word 
for it,” said Sam. “Run-rig I believe they used to 
call it in old England, where our language came 
from.” 

“Guess the Pilgrim Fathers ran it a spell after 
they landed,” opined Timpkin, “till the spirit of Get 
Rich Quick, under the name of Freedom, upset the 
game. I expect that the labourers, when they were 
white men, made out that they owned the trees, as 
well as the produce of them in lieu of wages, and 
yanked them up when their time expired, and went 
and planted them somewhere else for themselves.” 

“Quite likely,” said Franklin. “Say, have any of 
you seen Marsden lately?” 

“No,” they replied as one. 

“You should see him, then,” remarked Franklin. 
“Something is wrong with him, if I’m any judge. 
Some folks don’t seem to have eyes in their heads, 
though. He acts queer all the time, and yet when 
I mentioned it to a man who had been talking to him 
for half an hour — ‘Didn’t notice,’ he said. He strikes 
me as a man who’s going loco about a woman. I’ve 


THE FRUIT-RANCH 


257 


seen the same kind of thing before. He gets on to 
discussions about sentiment and heart versus intellect. 
It’s clear to me some girl has twisted his brain for 
him. I can’t understand it. The world is full of 
good women, but writers of history seem to select 
the B-B-B’s to be remembered (beastly bad beauties) , 
the women that tangle men up, and make them do 
crazy things. Some people would think Marsden 
had been over-drinking. It’s as plain as Drew 
Mountain that he hasn’t.” 

“I tell you this,” interjected Timpkin. “A man 
that in love looks as if he was in liquor should cut 
it out- — cut it out. Do you remember that guy 
Grosset, Sam? Of course you do! Well, look at 
the way he used to sit around and whisper about 
some female: ‘Wow! That’s how I feel!’” 

“Yes, yes,” said Sam, and looked put out, had a 
sudden interest in the young apple-trees. He did not 
know that this little chat was a “put-up job” be- 
tween Franklin and Timpkin — put-up because of his 
own queer preoccupied manner of late. Sing inter- 
rupted the talk. 

“Hullo!” he hailed. “Mishatimkins — she hol- 
lah!” 

Looking round they saw Mrs. Timpkin coming to- 
ward them from the bungalow, with the hopeless 
air of one who had long been “hollering,” and had 
given it up as a useless strain upon the thorax. Now, 
being seen, she beckoned to the men. She was a 
jollier-looking Mrs. Timpkin that when Sam first saw 


258 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


her in his own necessitous days. Apologetically they 
all hastened to her. 

“Here’s Mr. Webley,” she told them, “with a 
party in his motor-boat — broken down.” 

“Where?” demanded Sam. 

“Oh, they’re all right,” said Mrs. Timpkin re- 
assuringly, with a flick of a glance toward her hus- 
band. “They paddled inshore, using their hands for 
oars, and he came up to see if anyone was around 
who could fix him. I told him I’d find you, and 
he’s gone back to the beach to cheer the others. You 
go down, Lincoln, and bring the women right up 
to the ranch. I expect the tinkering on that boat 
will call for some accompaniment of language.” 

“We’ll all go down,” said Franklin, while Sam, 
without speaking, strode off. “I know you’re an 
engineer, Haig, and I’ve had experience of gaso- 
lene tubs. Webley!” he chuckled. “Webley is just 
the man to say ‘to the devil with it’ if anything 
goes wrong. I remember when he was freight-shed 
boss. He managed it all right. He had the savvy 
of how to move tons of machinery with only three 
hands to help him, but he hated the job. ‘Here’s 
jiu-jutsu, boys!’ he used to say. ‘Here’s — (they 
were out of earshot of Mrs. Timpkin by now, so it 

was safe to repeat — “here’s some more » * 

jiu-jutsu.’ I used to stroll past slow when any busi- 
ness took me near, just to hear him.” Sam was 
thrusting a way through the foreshore jungle of wild 
berry-bushes and scrub, left there when the ranchman 


THE FRUIT-RANCH 


259 


cleared, Timpkin at his heels, just far enough be- 
hind, having had experience in the woods, not to 
be whipped in the face by back-springing tendrils 
after Sam’s passing. “There he is. There they 
are. 

In a motor-boat that lay alongside a projecting 
tree that served as jetty were Mrs. Webley, Nance, 
and her friend Miss Walters. Out of the tangle 
the three men came cracking through, and appeared 
to the stranded boaters as the Portuguese appeared 
to Crusoe. Greetings over, and Timpkin introduced, 
the ladies were invited ashore to inspect the ranch 
while Franklin and Sam advised upon the deranged 
engine. 

“Mrs. Timpkin has put the kettle on,” said Timp- 
kin, “and though we didn’t expect visitors we can 
rustle you some kind of a meal.” 

“It’s a shame to foist ourselves upon you,” said 
Mrs. Webley. “Perhaps the engine can be set 
a-going soon.” 

“Your break-down is our good fortune,” replied 
Sam quickly, and Timpkin had the air (if it may 
be put so of a human being) of cocking his ears, 
wondering if here was the note of merely formal or 
really sincere hospitality. “You would have to see 
the place anyhow before long, so you may just as 
well stay now.” 

“We’ll make it a surprise party, then!” cried 
Nance. “There’s a luncheon-basket here some- 
where.” 


260 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Why, so there is!” exclaimed her mother. “I’d 
quite forgotten. Pass out that basket, and we’ll 
go up and call on Mrs. Timpkin, and introduce our- 
selves. We’ve heard of her often,” and she beamed 
on Timpkin, who beamed in return. 

The basket was lifted out with great care, and 
away they trudged, Timpkin first, Mrs. Webley at 
his heels, the girls tarrying a little while to peer over 
the backs of Franklin, Sam and Webley that bent 
beside the engine; then (when the men’s pose of 
interest turned to pose of irritation) following Mrs. 
Webley; and over their shoulders they delivered 
parting admonitions of patience and calm. 

While the mechanics were employed on their tink- 
ering a long motor-boat came coughing round the 
tip of Ten Mile Point, and Franklin, looking up, 
said: “Who’s boat is this now?” 

Webley, in shirt-sleeves, his hair all rumpled, and 
in his eyes a red glint, glanced up. 

“It looks like Marsden’s,” said Sam. 

“It is his,” growled Webley. “Got a party on 

board too! A whole party, and they’ll 

come alongside and look on, and 

anyhow !” It was as if he was back at freight-shed 
work. 

The boat swept into the bay, leaving a fine sickle 
of a wake behind it on the cold green and amber 
of the water, and, engine off, glided to Innes’ jetty. 

“There!” said Webley. “That’s got it. We’ll 
just trial trip it. I thought they were coming over 


THE FRUIT-RANCH 


261 


here, but they’ve gone to see your neighbour. Let 
go, Haig — push her off,” and out they went from 
their primitive landing place. 

Watching the engine for any fresh sign of trouble 
kept them from being aware of the movements of 
the party across the bay, but as they came to land 
again they saw a group of men and women disap- 
pearing in the direction of Innes’ ranch, scrambling 
over the beach, with much laughter, and rattling of 
boulders. Innes was standing at the landing place, 
waiting for Marsden, who was making snug, seeing 
that the cork fenders were out, and the painter fast; 
and on seeing them look toward him he waved his 
hand gaily in air, jumped to the beach and strolled 
along toward them. 

“How-do?” he hailed, coming near. 

To Sam he seemed not a bad fellow; he was a 
youthful, eager figure of a man with what is called 
“snap” in his manner. Franklin and Webley he 
already knew, and hardly needed introduction to 
Sam. He was the kind of young man to whom a 
boat or an apple could play the part of introduc- 
tion. He extended his hand. 

“You’re a new neighbour of mine, I believe,” he 
said. “How are you?” and then, more quietly, as 
though he had known Sam for years: “Say, take 
my tip. Don’t go in for the entertaining stunt; it 
bores me stiff. My place isn’t a home; it’s a gol- 
darn hotel. I invite folks down because I think it’s 
good for business, and they eat and drink the profits, 


262 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


and they bore me so that I want to insult them 
and tell them to get home. Here’s Marsden. D’ye 
know Marsden? Meet my friend Mr. Marsden, 
Mr. ” 

Marsden had followed him, and now stood a few 
feet behind, looking at the boats instead of at the 
men, gave three nods — one for each presumably — 
and said: “How-do — how-do — how-do, gentle- 
men?” It was not offensive. It was, as Franklin 
would say, “queer.” It did not suggest that there 
was anything wrong with them in his estimation. 
It suggested that there was something wrong with 
him. The man seemed dazed. Innes stopped in 
the middle of his introduction and stared at him, 
not with a frown as some men do when puzzled by 
another’s behaviour, but with wide eyes that sug- 
gested a kind of naif half-amusement, half-aston- 
ishment. 

“I was just saying,” said Innes, blinking at him, 
in an attempt to draw him into conversation, “that 
it bores me stiff. What is the good of entertaining 
the man you know is to be chief judge at the Horti- 
cultural Show when you know that somebody else 
is entertaining him too — and when he knows you are 
only trying to throw the con* into him? If I had 
to start produce-raising again I’d start on the prin- 
ciple of: ‘I can raise fruit. I don’t entertain judges 
of shows, and I don’t lay myself out to give good 

♦“Throwing the con.” Derivation: “Throwing the con- 
necting line.” 


THE FRUIT-RANCH 


263 


times to buyers for export. I don’t need to. My 
fruit is good enough without that!’ What do you 
think, Marsden? I know what I know, but what 
do you think?” 

“That’s the way of it, all right, all right,” replied 
Marsden, heavily. The look of alertness that showed 
for a flicker on his face was forced. 

Innes glanced puzzled at him again. 

“What is the way to do it?” he asked. He sus- 
pected that Marsden had not been listening. 

“As you say,” returned Marsden. 

Innes shook his head at the others as one hopeless. 

“It’s a proposition all right,” said Marsden, draw- 
ing a hand slowly down his jaw, his lips puckering. 

“I don’t believe you’re thinking of my proposition 
at all,” said Innes bluntly. “It’s no proposition to 
me. I say if I had to begin again I’d attend to my 
fruit. All I’d have to remark to the buyers would 
be : ‘My apples are good. It don’t cut any ice what 
whisky I keep.’ Sounds simple, don’t it? A lot of 
people miss the point, and think that the basis of any 
business is throwing the con into possible buyers, and 
giving free lunches and picnics to show-adjudicators.” 
He nodded his head. “What do you know about it, 
Marsden? Wake up and look intelligent!” 

“That’s right,” said Marsden. “A man is apt to 
forget the basis of things.” 

Innes prodded him in the midriff. 

“Come along, old man,” he said, “and have a 
cocktail. I’ve got to look after my guests, if you 


264 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


will ex-cuse me, friends. Come through and have a 
look around. I’m no dog in the manger. I’ve got 
Peters down here to-day — you know him, buys for 
two or three of the big Seattle firms. You come 
through, you boys, and be introduced casually. 
Handy to know. He buys big, and he can buy from 
you as well as from me. May be useful to you,” 
and he turned away. 

“Sort of leaves an impression of gay and irre- 
sponsible,” said Franklin. “But say — what did I 
tell you about Marsden? That boat’s all right, 
Webley, don’t you worry. These fenders are all 
right. The hull’s made of steel, not egg-shell. Come 
along. The ladies will think we’re never going to 
get through.” 


CHAPTER II 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 

T HEY were delighted with the location, the 
aspect, the house — fairly built as a home for 
summer and winter, with sleeping-porches and 
heating apparatus. To west, a strip of jungle, left 
as The First Cause had left it, hid Innes’ domain. 
To east, beyond the rows of fruit-trees that Irvine 
had cleared the way for and planted, still rose the 
blue whorls and eddies of smoke where Sing and 
Tom had set alight the remaining stumps out toward 
the point, and still would there be blue smoke-haze by 
day and dancing little flames by night for a week 
maybe, while the resinous roots spluttered on. To 
inland, south, beyond the avenues of orderly trees, 
converging in perspective, a belt of scrub ribboned 
along at the foot of the mountain range that was 
all stately pine and feathery fir, balancing the moun- 
tain across the lake. A limit was set to competition 
by the lie of the land, for only a little way to west, 
beyond Innes’ ranch, and a little way to east, beyond 
Ten Mile Point, the mountains pushed forward, 
came steeply down to the lake, with no offering of 
rich bottom-lands at all. Sam felt that he would 
never get over the pleasure of owning such a place ; 
though to be sure he did not want to get over it. 
265 


266 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


He was in the mood of wanting to sit up with it all 
night. Sleepy from work, he yet found it difficult 
to go to bed down there, was not inclined to leave 
the pleasure of ownership. For the moment he was 
relishing the further pleasure of showing it to his 
first visitors. 

“This is certainly a difference,” said Webley when, 
after washing oil and petrol-odour from their hands, 
the men joined the women and announced the boat 
again in action, “this is a difference from forty-five 
dollars a month at the freight-shed, Haig. And it’s 
no wild-cat,” he added, his eyes roving round. 

Then they fell to on the viands, those of the lunch- 
basket, and those Mrs. Timpkin had called upon 
Sing to “rustle,” and were, in the words of Defoe, 
“all innocently merry.” 

“And of course,” said Miss Walters, “you have 
all kinds of big schemes for the future?” 

“I have one little scheme just now,” replied Sam. 
“It sprang into my head I don’t know where from.” 
He turned to Franklin. “Listen to this,” he said. 
“I read some time ago about a ranch that specialises 
on supplying fruit to the Mandarins of Europe, and 
the Money-gluttons of New York. Pieces of paper, 
cut like stencils, to form initials, are pasted on to 
the apples when they are green, and when they ripen 
the paper is torn off, and there’s your very own 
apple, stamped with your monogram or your own 
crest — yellow initials on red fruit.” 

“What a fine notion 1” cried Nance. 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 267 


“My idea,” continued Sam, “is this: Why don’t 
we arrange with our local hotels here for that kind 
of thing? To make fruit-farming pay fruit-ranchers 
must club together or invent schemes, hustle one way 
or another; otherwise cost of transport cuts down the 
profits. This is only a small notion; but all such 
notions help. It catches me. Kings and railroad- 
magnates are not the only people capable of seeing 
the fun of eating a crested, or monogrammed, or per- 
sonally-identified apple.” 

“I shall start it at the Grand Western” replied 
Franklin. “It will be talked about. ‘Where do your 
apples come from ?’ they’ll ask, and I shall say, ‘Like 
the idea? I can book your order for a barrel-full 
with your own monogram on each apple.* ” 

“It is just a lot of little things like that,” said Mrs. 
Timpkin, “that count. You’ll have a live business 
if you go on thinking in these lines.” 

The talk went on, to and fro, till suddenly there 
was a noise of someone breaking through the brush 
that was frontier between the two ranches, and Innes 
came into sight, while behind him — in a hesitating 
fashion — advancing, delaying, and waiting to be seen 
and invited, his guests followed, a slightly flushed 
throng. 

“Can we come up?” Innes hailed. 

“Come right along,” answered Timpkin* 

Innes, ahead of his party, bowed to the ladies, 
and in a hasty aside — “Thought Fd bring them 
over,’* he murmured. “Glad you’re here, Mr. Web- 


268 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


ley. I’ve got two of the judges for the coming fair 
down to-day. I’ll wedge in a word or two somehow 
about your sweet-peas. May as well use people, 
once you know them. Bored stiff, though. Yes, oh 
yes. Quite so. Fine location. Some orchard. Some 
apples. Don’t know if you’ve met Mr. Peters. Mr. 
Peters, meet the man who raises the smartest sweet- 
peas in the country. Mr. Peters is an authority on 
sweet-peas. Shake hands with Mr. Webley — Mr. 
Peters.” 

Followed other introductions or renewals of ac- 
quaintanceship. Some had met before, others had 
not, and those on the porch were anon all on their 
feet, bowing and smiling like marionettes to those 
grouped below. 

“Have some tea,” suggested Mrs. Timpkin. 
“We’ve just got through, but ’ 

“Oh, we’re just through some refreshment our- 
selves,” replied Innes; “we only came over to see 
your location. Fine, isn’t it, Peters? There is go- 
ing to be no jealousy or envy here. I tell you what 
it is — this belt right along here is going to raise fruit. 
It ain’t going to raise discord. We’re not going to 
cut each other out at all, not going to try to. There’s 
room for everybody. How’s that, Deering? It’s 
simply lake fruit you’ll buy, not Innes’ fruit, or 
Timpkin’s fruit, or Haig’s fruit. You want to keep 
your eye on this new bunch.” 

Innes had evidently the same views regarding the 
necessity for combination as Sam had recently voiced. 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 269 


“Oh, I shall do that,” said Deering, and gave a 
little bow to Timpkin, the eldest — or the eldest-look- 
ing — man to whom he was thus introduced. 

To all this Sam listened with a tremendous show 
of attention, not only because he was interested, but 
because among Innes’ friends was Mildred Hender- 
son, and in the tangle of introducing, and re-intro- 
ducing, she had managed to evade him altogether. 
As the people nodded and smiled one to another she 
had just dodged him; and the young man was as 
proud as Satan, or at any rate, as proud as Milton 
said Satan was. That was why he was suddenly so 
tremendously engrossed in listening to what someone 
else had to say when she broke out in some comment 
on the place. If she couldn’t see him, he didn’t see 
her. The last time they had met (or had not met, 
for she had sent him from her door with a “Not at 
home”) must not be forgotten, no matter what allure 
she might exercise over him. That was how he felt 
now ! 

The whole bevy, thus unceremoniously brought to- 
gether, was presently strolling toward the prepared 
orchard. They clustered along in a sequence of 
groups. Sam caught fragments of conversation from 
before and behind, but having Mrs. Webley by his 
side he had little talking to do, she being loquacious. 
Deering appeared to think she was the mother-hen 
of the new ranch owners, and devoted his attention 
to her. He was a man who liked to honour the ladies. 
On this occasion he was super-courteous and some- 


270 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


what elated. The whole party, indeed, exuded a 
subtle suggestion that their afternoon refreshment 
had come out of decanters instead of a tea-pot. But 
when one wants a man to award a medal to one’s 
fruit, wine is generally a greater incentive than tea. 
Sam heard the voluble Innes gaily congratulating 
Franklin: “. . didn’t know you were interested 
in this sort of thing.” 

“Just for a lake home,” said the deep Franklin, 
casually. “I’m going to build a bungalow along there 
by the point.” 

“Very good, very good. Fine. Hotel business 
is a worry. Want a rest now and then. Never told 
you I was once in that line — hotels. Oh yes ; that’s 
where I got wise to the game of life. I bought a 
hotel once and thought it was all right. It seemed 
to me it kept on running itself; but one day a man 
said to me: ‘I hope you don’t mind my mentioning 
it, but I’ve put up at your joint every time I’ve been 
in town. I’m a business man; I see; I know; I get 
the hang of places I come to.’ Thought he was go- 
ing to add that he conquered, but he went on very 
solemn and friendly: ‘I simply have got to tell you 
that if you don’t look out your two bar-keeps will 
buy your hotel before the year is out — on the knock- 
downs.’ It made me stare. I had a punch and hit 
the bell till, and things like that. They were in the 
shack when I bought it. Seemed to me that the bar- 
keeps couldn’t skin me; but they had their system. 
No — they didn’t buy the hotel from me. I went and 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 271 


sat in the bar myself for a week, and compared that 
week’s takings with previous weeks; and the result 
was that I fired ’em. I fired ’em and sold up — and 
they bought the hotel from the man I sold to ! What 
do you know about that?” 

Marsden, who had been dragging along alone, 
between cluster and cluster, came out of his 
muse. 

“That’s it,” he said. “That’s the game. The 
bar-keeps skinned you under your nose. You were 
too trustful — too trustful.” 

“Oh, I learnt,” commented Innes, glancing over 
his shoulder. 

“That’s it,” repeated Marsden. “The man who 
keeps his eyes skinned is the man who’s going to come 
out on top. I don’t say the man who knows how to 
play a mean game better than his neighbour, but the 
man who keeps his eyes skinned.” 

“All right,” said Innes. “All right. Don’t harp 
on it. I’m a light weight, and I’ve got your views 
without having to have them thundered at me. 
You’ll blow me off my feet, all same feather, one of 
these days, shouting your philosophy of life at 
me !” 

Thus they came, in their sequence of groups, clear 
to the point, breaking through the bushes and step- 
ping out on to the shingle like discoverers, the wind 
from the lake blowing fresh in their faces, plucking 
at the men’s coat-tails (or blowing them flat when 
they turned their backs), billowing out the women’s 


272 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


frocks. Mildred tilted back, hands raised to hat- 
brim, head held up, the loose ends of the veil that 
was tied under her chin a-flutter, a figure intriguing 
(as they use the word in these days) to the eye, if not 
necessarily (because of her conscious, too greatly 
obvious, certainty in herself and her pose) altogether 
attractive. She stood a trifle apart, and her eyes 
roved to Miss Walters — tall as she, fair for her 
dark, graceful, but attempting no conspiracy with 
the wind. 

‘‘Well, you have a fine place!” exclaimed Mrs. 
Peters. “If I got the offer of New York or of this 
I guess I’d have this.” 

“O woman!” chanted her husband. “If you 
owned New York you could have this.” 

“Not if the owner wouldn’t sell,” she replied 
quickly. “I’d have this, as I say; and I’d have 
a board printed ready to stick up when I wanted 
just to be left alone: ‘Not at home.’ Anybody 
motor-boating along could just read that, down helm, 
and turn around.” 

“That’s dead,” said Mrs. Timpkin, who had re- 
sented Mr. Peters’ remark that the place could be 
bought, was of small financial worth compared with 
New York (true though the statement was), and 
considered a little slap at Mrs. Peters as good as 
one at Peters. “In the best society they don’t say 
‘Not at home’ now.” 

Mildred glanced at her, shrewdly, calculating — 
and decided (wrongly) that Sam had sought a con- 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 273 


fidante. She thought the hint of an edge in Mrs. 
Timpkin’s remark was for her; in such little ways 
do erroneous conceptions arise. 

Aware that Sam now looked at her, Mildred tilted 
her head a shade more, and a smile — just a hint 
supercilious — was on her lips. 

He wanted to say: “I didn’t tell her. You’re 
wrong!” How this girl provoked him ! How pain- 
fully subtle she made him! A man with broad- 
gauge instincts, she made him narrow-gauge. Once 
she had lured; now she came nigh irritating. De- 
voutly did he wish she had no effect at all. Peters, 
who always had a storyette to tell, plunged into that 
one about the Irish landowner who ordered his man 
to give visitors an evasive answer if they called 
when he was busy. The yarn ended with an account 
of how, one evening, the man had been asked: “Did 
anyone call?” — “Yes, yer honour.” — “And what did 
you do?” — “I gave them an evasive answer.” — 
“What did you say?” — “They asked me was your 
honour at home, and I asked was their grandmother 
a monkey.” As they laughed over it Sam turned, 
and very deliberately met Mildred’s eyes. She 
couldn’t smile a secret half-supercilious smile now. 
Peters was a stranger to him. She had seen them 
introduced but a few minutes ago. She could not 
suggest, with drooping eyelids, and a certain un- 
worthy smile, intended for him, that he had sought 
sympathy over the rebuff of “Not at home” from 
Peters! But she was gazing with rapt expression 


274 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


at the sky, did not seem to see him, slowly turned 
her back as he looked. 

“Irish helps are apt to be a bit uncouth,” said 
Mrs. Peters. “Coons are better. They haven’t such 
a mania for disturbing the peace — they’re more civil 
to your friends when they call.” 

“True,” said Mildred, suddenly. “And if your 
Irish servant has a grievance against you, she’ll be 
rude to your friends, just to spite you.” 

She turned again as she spoke, and her face was 
inscrutable to the young man. Was that rebuff at 
her brother-in-law’s door, he wondered (as maybe 
she intended him to wonder), all an error of the 
door-opener’s who had confused him with someone 
else or misunderstood an order? Had Mildred not 
decreed it, but only heard of it from the scullion 
later? Was it he who was in the wrong? Was 
she hurt that he had not tried again to communicate 
with her' — had not had belief in her friendliness, had 
not been sure it was a mistake? 

He stood rigid a moment; but the next his eyes 
fell on Nance Webley, standing with Mrs. Peters, 
.and it struck him that there was a girl who would 
not plunge a man into a fever, who would give him, 
instead, a straight deal. He had been free of his 
infatuation for some time, anger having ousted it; 
and he knew, at that moment, that he preferred the 
state of freedom — at that very moment when, all 
unexpected, he was almost whelmed again. 

Suddenly Marsden spoke to Nance Webley. 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 275 


“Oh, Miss Webley,” he said, “thank you for or- 
dering the lunch-basket,” referring, belike, to some 
request of his over the garden fence for her service. 

“It was down in time, then?” 

“It was down all right — and your selection is all 
right. Thank you very much. I never know what 
to order. A pleasure trip is different from a pros- 
pecting outfit.” 

“It was nothing,” she declared. “I was going in 
for our basket anyhow.” 

Sam gathered from this that she had seen to the 
provisioning on Marsden’s behalf, and for a few 
moments was filled with excitations somewhat in the 
vein of those that afflict the — if not matchmaker — 
match-suspector. Perhaps that deep card Marsden, 
acting upon some confounded theories of it being 
a cunning world instead of a hard world, pretend- 
ing to be in pursuit of Mildred Henderson, would 
really astonish Kootenay by proposing to his neigh- 
bour’s daughter! Our hero, or it should be said, 
this being a tale of to-day, our protagonist, was a 
trifle unhinged. Such a contretemps, thought he, 
would not be novel in the history of wooings and 
marriage. Deep man, Marsden! Sam blazed in- 
wardly over his imaginings, and without any proof 
worthy the name of proof, he was angry with Mars- 
den, looked upon him as a middle-aged ogre. It 
would be scandalous — criminal, and all the rest of 
it. Sam was in a bad way. 

The conversation became less general. The party 


276 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


fell into two-somes and three-somes again. Sam 
was alert to notice the sneer with which Mildred 
Henderson glanced at Nance’s flounces, and her 
shoes, and her hat, and then turned away, posing 
once more in the breeze. He peered sharply at her; 
and the chiselled lines of her face seemed to him 
to indicate a superficial nature, a superficial beauty. 
Her surface was fair enough, but what shone through 
no longer held him. He furrowed his brows, sur- 
veyed her coldly, critically, as though he had never 
seen her before. She was the kind of woman who 
is called beautiful, he thought, but he was of the 
opinion that this kind of beauty should not be al- 
lowed the name. It was a usurpation — it was 
“brass,” “cheek,” “gall.” Diagnose that so-called 
charm and it was mere skin and bone and cosmetics. 

There was a cruel glamour on her face. He re- 
called a phrase of Schopenhauer about the necessity 
for the existence of sexual passion for one who 
would attain appreciation of some kinds of beauty. 
He came to the decision that she was not beauti- 
ful! It was a thin, hard mouth; it was the tight- 
ened chin of one aiming at a chiselled aspect; the 
great soft eyes had a glint in them that belied all 
their apparent gentleness. She looked abruptly to- 
ward him, and he was at once engrossed upon the 
lake, watching the tiny waves that broke at the 
shingle’s edge. But the scene was blurred for him 
by his inner communings. Something was happen- 
ing, so deep that he did not plumb all the depths. 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 277 


It was one of those cross-road days, or one of those 
stock-taking days, or one of those days for sloughing 
old conceptions and beginning afresh. And the sun 
shone, and the water broke, lap-lapping on the 
beach, and eternal breezes fanned the cheeks of the 
little bunch of humanity. 

The party turned and strolled back from the shore. 
Innes brought Sam to attention. 

“Come over with us,” Innes invited, and it struck 
Sam, looking at the young rancher, they thus vis-a-vis , 
that he had maybe taken a cocktail too many. “Come 
and have a look round, Mr. Haig. You’ll come 
over too, Mr. Webley? I’ve a flower-pot or two 
along there — interest you.” 

“We really must be going,” replied Webley. “We 
did not even set out to call on Mr. Haig.” 

The talk of the various groups lulled as each 
watched for the sign to make final salaams and de- 
part. Only one cluster was still vivacious. Mildred 
Henderson was with that one, and they all heard 
her voice raised at the end of some argument in 
which her immediate circle had evidently partici- 
pated. It was clear to Sam that she spoke “at” 
him. 

“I like a man to have grit,” she said, and gave 
her most engaging smile. “Grit to do things, I 
mean,” she added. 

Innes slapped Sam’s shoulder. 

“Here’s a man that should please you!” he cried. 
“You don’t mind my telling?” and he plunged on 


278 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


before Sam could say yea or nay. “Knocked the 
face off a man in town one day. Peaceful Sabbath 
afternoon, wasn’t it? There was some woman in 
that, Mr. Haig — eh?” and he wagged a playful 
finger at Sam. 

“But that’s not grit !” said Mildred. “That’s jeal- 
ousy — granted that there was a woman in it. I never 
heard about Mr. Haig’s little brawl.” 

Marsden, who had been standing heavy and 
gloomy listening, said now in rumbling voice: “Put 
a name on it, Miss Henderson. What would you 
like a man to do?” 

She favoured him with a melting smile, centre of 
the stage now, very radiant. 

“I tell you what I would call gritty,” she said. 
“A man rode up to the Lanyon Mine the other day 
in one of the buckets ” 

Sam suddenly interrupted. He had to control 
himself. 

“I was working the machine then,” he said, “and 
the man who rode up fell out — if that’s the occasion 
you refer to. He was killed. It cut me up so that 
I had to quit work for the day.” 

“You don’t say!” Mildred Henderson exclaimed. 

“Never mind,” said Innes, very friendly. “That’s 
tribute to your sense of feeling things, Mr. Haig. 
Never mind. You knocked another man’s face in. 
I heard about that. I had you pointed out to me. 
Recognised you as soon as I saw you to-day. Pleased 
to meet you. Pleased to meet you.” 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 279 


“Well, I would like a man to ride up in the 
buckets,” said Mildred, and gave just a flicker of a 
glance of annoyance at Innes. 

Nance Webley had her eyes on Marsden. 

“I think men do so much for women,” she said 
in a quiet voice, “that it’s not fair to ask them to 
do dangerous things only for a whim.” 

Mildred’s eyes flashed, and then with a gracious 
smile toward Nance she said, looking at her as though 
only now aware of her presence: “What a nice 
thought! And so men do enough for you already 
— or is it the story of the Fox and the Grapes?” 
and she wrapped her words up in a laugh. “But 
though I am a woman myself,” she added, “I can 
say, because I am not speaking personally, that there 
are women for whose sake men do things without 
being asked.” 

“That’s so, that’s so,” agreed Innes, bowing low 
to nobody in particular, genially “oiled,” it would 
appear, tapping unpleasantness, and desiring to make 
things pleasant. “O the power of woman! Helen 
of Troy, and that sort of thing. Cleopatra, and — 

and ” he tailed off, “and Potiphar’s wife, you 

know,” he murmured to Sam, who stood beside him. 
“Whoo — I must sober up! I had two or three 
shots before w T e came over, and they’re operating 
now. I feel squiffy. Well, come along, you people.” 

They drifted away, nodding adieux, and as the 
last of them disappeared in the strip of jungle be- 
tween the ranches, Miss Walters giggled. 


280 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“That was supposed to be a smack at you, Nance,” 
she said. “I miss a lot of these sort of remarks that 
members of my sex sometimes go in for, but you 
are evidently supposed to know nothing about 
men doing things for women. Her face added 
that!” 

“Oh, it’s nothing,” answered Nance. “I’m sorry 
for Mr. Marsden. He’s getting quite upset. He 
comes in and talks to us sometimes at home, and 
though he never mentions her directly we can tell 
he’s just crazy about Miss Henderson. I wouldn’t 
like a man to be crazy like that about me. I’d 
be sorry if any man was ever crazy about me. I 
said what I did to hint to her that she might play 
the game with him. I believe he’s made up his 
mind to ride up in one of the buckets.” 

“Never!” exclaimed Miss Walters. 

“He’s a queer man,” said Nance, opening her eyes 
very wide, and delivering upon them a slow nod 
in a way she had. 

“Well, what about us going also?” suggested 
Webley. 

“Up in a bucket?” Mrs. Webley exclaimed. 

“No— no. Home.” 

“Oh, no — you stay,” said Sam. “These people 
have only interrupted, that’s all.” 

Timpkin winked at his wife. 

“Yes — you stay,” she urged. “I told Tom to 
see about rustling some supper.” 

Tom, as if conjured up, appeared behind them. 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 281 


“I make suppah,” he said. “Vely good. I hustle 
suppah. You all stop, eh? How many now?” 

u There’s an invitation,” said Mrs. Timpkin. 
“You’ll have to stay, to please Tom.” 

So they stayed. And it was wondrously and large- 
ly peaceful after their neighbour’s party had with- 
drawn, and the aura, or whatever you may call it, 
left behind by that mixed crowd had evaporated. 
Nervous uncertainties in relationship, or attitude, 
were all gone. The polished floors and beamed ceil- 
ings (designed in generous spirit) lent themselves 
more to quiet than to agitations. 

When Sing brought in the lamps and hung them 
up there was a jewel-like quality in the floor space, 
a dull gold and amber effect. Through wide-open 
windows the lapping of water along the lake front 
sounded restful, and kindly, and friendly. Sing, 
slippering about behind the supper-party, in a white 
jacket, imitating on his own initiative the stewards 
on the lake-steamers, smiled no cryptic smile, but 
that of a servant well pleased. Here was no more 
rushing and fluttering to serve and feed hungry cut- 
rate boarders. Timpkin was at ease; no more did 
his leanness seem to border on the cadaverous. The 
hint of desperation had gone from the corners of 
his eyes. When he glanced at his wife now it was 
not with that questioning look — wondering how she 
was standing the strain — but with a look of satis- 
faction that she was free from it. 

“I’m glad that crowd didn’t stay to supper,” said 


282 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


Webley. “We couldn’t have enjoyed this with them 
here,” and he held up a finger. 

“You mean the sounds?” asked Miss Walters. 

“Everything,” he replied. 

“That’s wind in the tree-tops we can hear,” said 
she. 

Sam had a sudden thought that a pretty woman 
not obsessed by her prettiness can be very pleasant. 
The non-analytic young man, who had of late been 
so unwontedly sensitive, had no idea that he was 
instituting comparisons; but they were assuredly be- 
ing instituted for him. After supper was over Mrs. 
Timpkin asked if anyone played, and Nance went 
to the piano, and they kept her there until a dis- 
tant crackling brought Mrs. Webley up in her chair, 
alert. 

“What’s that?” she asked. 

“It’s all right, it is only our neighbours going off. 
That’s Marsden starting his boat.” 

“Then it’s late,” said Webley. “We shall have 
to look out for snags going home. That’s the one 
trouble in this wilderness lake boating. Is there a 
moon to-night? You never know when some creek 
has chucked out a fallen tree and set it adrift in 
the lake. Yes, we must go.” 

“The moon will be up in another hour,” said 
Sam. 

“How do you know so well?” inquired Webley. 
“Have you started a local meteorological station?” 

Sam laughed, and “I own up,” he replied, 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 283 


“that I’m so struck on the place that I can’t sleep 
some nights for sheer enjoyment of it. I can hardly 
believe it’s true. Last night I got up again to look 
out. Bright! It was wonderful. It was so bright 
that you could see the apples all picked out on the 
trees, right down the rows. I had to go out and 
stroll down to the point.” 

“You’ll be meeting a bear or a wild-cat if you 
do that sort of thing in the middle of the night!” 
Franklin interjected, smiling at the young man’s 
enthusiasm. 

Miss Walters rose, and walking to the door passed 
into the porch. “Isn’t that great!” she said. 
“There’s the moon just rising. Come and look.” 

Clustering at the door they looked out, and en- 
joyed the display, saw the slags of brightness break- 
ing on the peaks, the great wedges of black-purple 
shadows; the taller pine-tops well lit up; the sud- 
den dart of a moon-path across the lake, twinkling 
ghostly, with its effect of wavering silver discs, be- 
tween the boundary bushes and scrub. The girls 
walked along the veranda; Sam strolled after them. 
Miss Walters descended the steps and stood below. 
To Sam there came a sense of having formerly lived 
that part of his life, of: 

“I have been here before, 

But when or how I cannot tell.” 

No one spoke. Nance stood beside him, the queer 
blanching moonlight on her; and then there came to 


284. 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


his mind that night on the veranda at Henderson’s 
with Mildred, and inwardly he writhed. That night 
belonged to another life, a drugged life. 

“You’re very quiet, Nance,” Miss Walters said, 
looking up. 

“I’m thinking,” replied Nance. “I can’t get out 
of my head the way Mr. Marsden looked at Miss 
Henderson when she was talking about grit. I be- 
lieve he’s so crazy about her that he’ll go and ride 
up in a bucket. I do. I’m almost sure about it.” 

“What I didn’t like was the way she spoke to 
you,” said her friend. “That man Marsden 
shouldn’t be such a fool!” 

“She’s such a beautiful woman,” said Nance. 

“Oh, she’s beautiful,” replied Miss Walters. 

“Do you think so?” asked Sam, for picturing her 
now he saw her as repellent. The eyes, recalled, 
were treacherous, the lips cruel, the face hard. 

“There’s no doubt about it,” said Nance. “And 
I don’t trouble about the way she spoke to me. 
But I don’t see what kind of pleasure it can give 
her to make a man do fool things for her — for noth- 
ing!" 

“That’s because you’re not built that way,” re- 
marked Miss Walters. 

From the porch Mrs. Webley called softly: “We’ll 
be getting down to the boat, you people”; and a 
few minutes later they were clattering over the slope 
of shingle, lanterns (thoughtfully provided by Sing) 
in hand, lanterns that they hardly needed because 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 285 


of the soaring moon. Franklin stepped into his boat 
and got ready. Webley bent over his engine. 

“We’ve got Mr. Franklin with us,” said Mrs. 
Webley, “so if it breaks down we can have a tow!” 

“Break down nothing!” growled her husband in 
tones that set them all smiling. “We’ll have a race 
home.” 

“Not with the ladies on board,” pleaded Sam. 

“All right?” asked Franklin. 

“All right,” responded Webley. 

“Thanks for a good time,” said Mrs. Webley. 

“And congratulations on your home,” added 
Webley. 

“And thanks for the music,” said Sam. 

As he held forth a hand to help Nance to embark 
he suddenly remembered that Sunday on the path 
below the Chinese ranches, when he had helped Mil- 
dred down the steep part — and he had a rush of 
annoyance at himself for that infatuation. The two 
boats chugged off, breaking the ripples in the dark 
water; rapidly, such was the effect, the strip of lake 
between them and the beach widened ; the lamps sent 
a dance of lights down into the deep, dark purple. 

“Isn’t it pretty?” came Nance’s voice. “Look 
at the glow of the windows through the brush.” 

“Come back soon again,” called Mrs. Timpkin. 

“Sure. Thank you !” the others replied. 

As the Timpkins and Sam walked back they looked 
round now and then at the two lights shining out 
on the lake, each accompanied by its reflection — 


286 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


changing flakes of gold forming and fading in the 
water. 

As they watched, one went out round the point; 
then the next was eclipsed. 

“Say, what lovely hair Miss Walters has!” ex- 
claimed Mrs. Timpkin. “I don’t know whether I 
like it best in sunlight or lamplight.” 

“What’s the matter with Miss Webley?” asked 
Timpkin. 

“Oh, she’s a peach. But say, wasn’t that Miss 
Henderson jealous of Miss Walters?” 

“I didn’t notice,” said Timpkin. 

“She didn’t like her being tall. I saw it. She 
kept on measuring her, downright angered, when we 
were out there at the point. And say, doesn’t she 
just pose! Well!” 

“O woman, woman!” said Timpkin. “I never 
noticed all that.” 

“No, of course you didn’t. You didn’t either, did 
you, Mr. Haig?” 

“I don’t know,” replied Sam. “Perhaps. Our 
supper-party has made me forget the earlier visitors 
a bit.” 

“Sure,” agreed Timpkin. “All I saw, in that 
way, was that Miss Henderson hated Nance Webley 
on sight.” 

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Timpkin, “I admit 
that Miss Henderson is what they call beautiful, 
but her face strikes me like a skull. I don’t like 
tn remember it; and yet she’s handsome enough. 


MILDRED THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE 287 


But I seem to see into her eyes, instead of just the 
colour of them; and I don’t like what’s in them; 
and she has mighty cruel lips. Now Mrs. Peters is 
what I call pretty — though she ain’t got anything 
to commend in the way of what you might call 
points.” 

“Points!” thought Sam, feeling far off. “That’s 
it — points! The way one talks of the lower an- 
imals !” But he said nothing. Moving before him, 
he in a retrospective mood, natural to him, was the 
face of Nance Webley as he had seen it in the 
moonlight when she stood at the top of the steps, 
so still that her friend commented upon her silence. 
It was, for some reason, a picture that would abide 
with him. He still felt her hand resting in his — 
and he was furious with himself. Not so long ago 
he had gone along a-dreaming of another girl’s 
hand — not so long ago he had been all a-fever over 
Mildred Henderson, and now (it made him 
ashamed) he was — no, not a-fever, maybe in the 
difference there was solace for his shame !■ — but most 
sweetly haunted by Nance Webley. Yet out of re- 
spect for her (you already know him as a highly 
honourable man) he refused to dream of her. He 
did not think that he was worthy. He looked 
beyond all women’s eyes, and faces, and their various 
glamour, to the everchanging silver discs of the 
moonlight on the lake, and noted the effect of 
quiescence on the soaring moon-blanched mountain. 
The sheen of the moon drifted over it like an aura. 


CHAPTER III 


THE GREAT ASCENT 

T HE engineer who had taken Sam Haig’s 
place at the smelter (when the lucky scheme 
of “mineral in place” transformed Sam into 
a fruit-farmer) was a happy and careless kid. 
“Chance it” was his motto in life. 

When, next day, Mr. Marsden appeared on the 
engine-house platform, considering the buckets as 
they glided down and were tipped, he jocularly re- 
marked: “Want a ride?” He did not think that 
Marsden really wanted a ride; this was only his 
gaiety. But when the big man glared at him and 
said “That’s the notion!” he observed that there 
was little pleasantry in Marsden’s eyes. The cele- 
brated contractor was grim to the point of strained. 
So the youthful engineer desisted from levity and 
kept the tail of his eye, as they say, on the visitor, 
awaiting developments. 

Suddenly Marsden went down frog-like on the 
platform and, as an empty bucket passed under him, 
flopped into it in the manner his examination had 
decided as most scientific. The young engineer 
opened his mouth, grinned and stared. He saw 
something comical in the bulk of Marsden jammed 
in that bucket and swaying off into air. 

288 


THE GREAT ASCENT 


289 


“Look out at the trestles,” he shouted, recover- 
ing from his amazement. “And say — don’t look 
down when you get to the gulch.” 

Between the arriving and tipping of each of the 
descending buckets he watched the progress of Mars- 
den, his grin fading, sign of anxiety taking its place; 
but as he saw the contractor pass the third trestle, 
atop of the first rise, all steady, featly balanced, 
he opined: “He’ll do it!” and then, looking down 
to the bridge, he saw another man coming along 
toward the engine-house, a man most businesslike. 
He watched him curiously from under the scoop 
cap that he wore raffishly on the side of his head. 

The man who came posting under the bluffs, as 
Marsden disappeared, left the road when opposite 
the machine-house, crossed to it, climbed up the lad- 
der, and — “Good-morning,” he said. 

“Why, it’s my predecessor!” exclaimed the youth. 
“I didn’t recognise you washed clean. I never saw 
you before but when you were black. How are 
you?” 

“I’m all right,” said Sam. “I want you to do 
me a favour.” 

“Yap?” 

“I want to go up in one of the buckets.” 

“The you do! It seems to be catchin’ ! 

Still, where there’s a bet concerned I won’t stand 
in the way and bust the game. How many are in 
it? Any more coming along — or are the others only 
effete onlookers?” 


290 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“Just a notion of my own/’ replied Sam, and 
(his system all thought out beforehand) slid with 
a ducking, sidewise motion into a passing bucket, 
and drifted instantly off into the air. 

The sensation was as if the power-house moved 
away from him, and for a moment the inclination 
was to stretch out and grab the platform’s edge. 
Sam took that as a hint that there might be other 
sensations in the escapade, sensations that must all 
be ignored. If he got through the adventure they 
could be recalled; but for the time being he must 
not lose his balance. The core of the whole adven- 
ture was to sit tight. At first the bucket swayed, 
and he accepted that, as a man in the water, fling- 
ing back to float, accepts the swirling over ears and 
face, confident in the buoyancy of that element. The 
oscillation of the bucket had ceased before he came 
to the first trestle, but the warning of carefulness 
regarding optical illusions, that he had received when 
the power-house seemed to drift away, he took to 
heart. He watched the trestle tower apparently ad- 
vancing on him. He lowered his head like a man 
in a barber’s chair when the neck is being shaven, 
lowered his head gently, chin on chest, passed under 
the arm, slowly raised his head again — and soared 
on up the hill. 

The feeling there was that he would inevitably 
collide with the crest. Hill and wire seemed to be 
menacingly drifting together. He told himself again 
that all he had to do was to sit tight, to imitate 


THE GREAT ASCENT 


291 


a roll of blankets, or a sack of potatoes, and forget 
all misleading perspective. Away he soared, and 
experienced a certain thrill on the crest as he found 
himself (instead of brained against the face of the 
hill) level with the lower tree-tops. He sat look- 
ing towards the east, and could thus see the streets 
of Kootenay laid out like a plan, or like a model 
city at an exposition — with only the difference that 
the men and vehicles moved. There suddenly came 
to him a tremendous impulse to perform what are 
called stunts. He wanted to screw his neck round, 
to discover if he could glimpse the Chinese farms 
from here among the last trees; but the bucket gently 
and admonitorily swayed. So he renounced that 
curiosity, and found himself now in the slit of ave- 
nue that had been cut for the tram through the 
belt of woods — swam out of that cleft, and saw the 
twist in the road coming up from the bend at which 
one turned off (or rather did not turn off) to the 
Pest House. Trestle by trestle he put chin on chest 
at the requisite intervals, kept it so the requisite 
length of time, even got this periodic bowing down 
to a system — counting ten from the moment he 
lowered till the moment he raised his head. It was 
methodical as a military salute — three paces before, 
and sustained till three paces past, so that there 
could be no doubt of its performance. He had not 
seen this upper spreading and falling valley, into 
which he now floated bird-like, since the day when 
he first encountered Marsden. And there, indeed, 


292 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


might be the spot where that meeting took place. 
Yes, just about there! 

Hullo ! Something seen out of the corner of his 
eye drew his head round. Was it a bird? No — 
it was an arm of a support, arrived at before he 
was aware. Down ducked his head. He must not 
be so easy about it all. He must not try to pick 
out objects. A pretty position to be sight-seeing in! 

As he passed over the bunk-houses of the Fraser 
Mine a man came out of one of the doors, saw him, 
called over his shoulder into the black interior and 
was joined by someone else, perhaps the cashier. 
It looked like his shape. Both shouted to him, but 
what they said he could not hear. Both pointed 
ahead, made unintelligible gestures. If they had 
only run up-hill, nearer to him, he might have heard 
the words, but they did not trouble to do so. They 
merely shouted and pointed. Yet when he looked in 
the direction they indicated he could see nothing to 
cause the excitement. The wires swung on to the 
next crest; that was all. 

Perhaps they were only trying to tell him that he 
would be met at his journey’s end by an irate boss. 
Perhaps they were warning him of the gulch ahead 
— that he had not seen but, as we know, of which 
he had heard. No matter. He was impelled to 
this escapade. Not all the irate bosses in the world 
were of any moment. The sudden falling away of 
the hill below him, in the other direction from the 
sweep he had met mounting, cautioned a reconstruc- 


THE GREAT ASCENT 


293 


tion of his mental balances. He said to himself yet 
again “Sit tight, my boy,” then carefully looked 
ahead, and hanging as he was in air, held out beyond 
the trestles, they did not impede his view. He could 
see the buckets, depending from the same wire as 
his, gliding down and down — had an inclination, 
despite his admonitions to himself to sit tight, to 
assist the balance of the bucket by moving to the 
side, as one moves to windward of a sailing-boat, 
forgetful that the bucket, and his dead-weight, would 
be plummet enough without any aid from him. 
Hardly had he reminded himself again that he was 
to be as impersonal as a sack of potatoes than he 
saw, down hill, the row of buckets suddenly stop 
descending and run straight out from the slope. 

His eyes followed them. He glared, he stared. 
There was a man in one of them out there — no 
doubt about it. That was not a load of groceries 
going up to the mine. It was a man. He could 
see the humped position, could see the face; and 
even as he watched he was drifted suddenly from 
the downward motion into the horizontal, and his 
breath came out of his chest in a little “Ugh!” 
For he looked down on the tops of trees that stood 
precariously on the almost perpendicular sides of 
a hideous cleft of the mountains. He was being 
carried over them. It was here that he was as- 
sailed not by one menace alone, but by two, by three. 
Vertigo, or something akin to vertigo, caught him. 
He was seized with the urgent need to hold some- 


294 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


thing, to grasp something with his hands, if it were 
no more than a pole such as tight-rope walkers bal- 
ance with, if it were no more than a Japanese um- 
brella ! ‘‘Sit tight!” he murmured tensely, and then 
giggled to himself over the thought of the umbrella ; 
but the strained giggle ended as a bird swept below 
him above the tree-tops. He looked down on its 
back. It was sailing up the gorge, and it seemed 
to send the scenery ribboning behind it. He wanted 
to lean forward, to catch the reeling world. 

“Sit tight!” he said again. “Sit tight!” 

And then came cramp, the tendons in his thighs 
knotting up so that he grit his teeth, made faces 
to himself up in the air there. As he so contorted 
his visage, the farther declivity of the gulch came 
stretching out to meet him, holding forth the arm 
of a trestle perched on the dizzy edge. He put 
chin on chest, lowered his head, passed under that 
arm, then raised his head, moving his neck to and 
fro in agony at being unable to move his legs — 
came to the next trestle, bowed again, grimacing, 
looked up and saw (with the intensest satisfaction) 
the platform where the buckets wheel and descend 
again. And propped beside the ore-dump was Mars- 
den, one leg drawn up as though he were crippled, 
face distorted, hands kneading, massaging. A man 
who bent over him rose abruptly and, facing Sam, 
struck the attitude of a baseball player ready to 
catch. 

“Easy!” he shouted as Sam sailed to the plat- 


THE GREAT ASCENT 


295 


form (or, as it seemed, the platform to Sam) . “You 
quit your bucket when you catch holt here and I’ll 
grab you. That’s it! Up with you! Grab holt! 
I’ve got ye ! Out with ye ! There ye are !” 

On his knees on the loading platform Sam rolled 
over and rubbed his legs. He lay on his side, twisted 
up like a kneeling figure knocked off a plinth. He 
rubbed and grunted and at last managed to rise 
from his ignominious position; and as he rose Mars- 
den, still moving one leg gingerly, held out his hand. 

“Mr. Haig — Sam Haig,” he said, “put it there. 
Put it there !” 

Sam took the hand extended to him and grasped 
it firmly. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE END OF THE JOURNEY 

E VERYONE at the Lanyon Mine took it for 
granted that the ascent had been made for a 
wager. Marsden was known by those at the 
summit camp, if not hail-fellow-well-met, known as 
a figure in Kootenay; and the boss of the shift that 
was coming off for dinner demanded that he, and 
his friend (as Sam now found himself styled, in 
the curious progress of his fortune) stay and eat. 
Hospitably were they led to the big barn-like room 
where were long tables covered with that kind of lac- 
quered cloth, sight of which brought back, for Sam, 
memories of the construction camp and days at Hen- 
derson’s ranch. 

Agile “hash-slingers” clapped down mighty plate- 
fuls before the mighty men who came shouldering 
in from the ablution-room scented with yellow soap, 
and rosy from its use. The travellers by bucket- 
tram sat on either side of the boss, who, in the 
midst of chat and stuffing of himself with steak, 
leant back and chuckled and announced that it beat 
cock-fighting. At the back of his mind (that was 
what the twinkle implied) was the thought that the 
escapade would be talked of; Marsden, city contrac- 
296 


THE END OF THE JOURNEY 


297 


tor, riding up on the tramway for a wager ! “Say ! 
It beats cock-fighting !” 

“I suppose you knew there was a man killed doing 
that stunt not long ago?” he enquired. 

“You bet you,” said Marsden. 

“Did you know?” said the boss, turning to Sam. 

He nodded. “I was working the tram-engine 
when he came up,” he replied. “Awful! I was 
cut up more than I can say. I had to quit work 
for the rest of the day when I knew.” 

“You ! Well, that beats cock-fighting !” The boss 
stoked more steak, and as he munched, bent over 
his plate, he had another thought. “Anyone that 
said you lost nerve over that affair can look cheap 
now. You lost nerve over another man falling out 
of a bucket when you were tending the engine, but 
you did it yourself. That’s ver-ry interesting, right 
interesting. Is it a big stake you gents had on it?” 

“Trifling,” replied Marsden quickly. “Yes — 
trifling, all right, all right.” He bent forward and 
glanced abruptly past the boss, at his rival, with 
an expression beyond Sam to fathom. 

Haig made no response, allowed Marsden’s reply 
to suffice, merely thanked the bouncing “hash-sling- 
er” for peaches and custard at that moment placed 
before him. When the shaft-whistle blew they shook 
hands with the boss and with those men who pushed 
round them for the honour of grasping the hands 
of adventurers. Then Marsden turned to Sam. 

“I suppose you don’t mind hitting the road with 


298 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


me, Haig?” he asked gloomily, and in a tone for 
Sam’s ear alone. 

“Not at all,” said Sam. “A pleasure.” 

“Good!” growled Marsden, and led off on the 
wagon-road, where they turned to wave to the plat- 
form man who had played masseur to them. 

“Ain’t you going down this way?” he hailed, 
beaming upon them. “All the buckets ain’t full.” 

They shook their heads, laughing. 

“No, thanks!” cried Marsden. 

“Once will do,” said Sam. “It might get monot- 
onous.” 

Away they plunged, left, right, left, right, on 
the uneven road. 

Sam was deep in thought; Marsden too; but when 
the latter spoke it was only to make expression of 
relishing these high altitudes, not to say aught of his 
mad prank or the cause of it. 

“Say, it seems good to me up here,” he rumbled. 

It was good. There was no doubt it was good. 
Summit after summit, range after range, marched 
away into distance, slashed and sculptured by the 
ages, with high lonely cliffs staring blankly at the 
passage of the seasons, unexpected upland valleys 
with their foaming creeks and scattered boulders. 
Ragged summits of their own particular mountain 
were close above them, awesome, compelling, with 
a sense of wild everlastingness. Sam mused upon a 
thought that drifted into his mind, a thought of the 
million snows that had powdered these peaks, the 


THE END OF THE JOURNEY 


299 


uncouth gales that had charged upon them, the rains 
that had danced on them with none to see, storms 
that had flashed, lighting them up on pitchy nights 
with sudden blaze. The air was keen, exhilarating. 
The view awoke a quiet, natural ecstasy, a view over 
crests that in Kootenay were looked up to. There 
was no humidity in the air. Over all that expanse 
was no blur of any local rain-storm; no steam ascend- 
ed to the sun from any of those unseen valleys be- 
tween the ridges. The mountains all stood up in 
their immutable ranks under a cold blue sky that 
seemed higher than ever, at this high altitude, in- 
stead of more approachable. 

For response to Marsden’s remark that it was 
good up here Sam had only a preoccupied grunt; 
but it sufficed. It was better than any other response 
could have been. This wagon-road on which they 
walked was little used, because of the tram, though 
once upon a time much machinery must have been 
hauled upon it by teams of straining horses. It was 
now little more than a highway for the miners de- 
scending and ascending, once in three months or so, 
to and from town. As for town — town was nothing 
at all from here, all that was visible being a few 
houses at the east end and, jutting into the lake, the 
steam-boat jetty, of no more apparent consequence 
than a match that, floating by, had been caught by a 
projection of the shore. The road did not descend 
abruptly, the sides of the gorge below being more 
precipitous than the steepest roof; it took a leisurely 


300 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


sweep, turned away to left, running at some places 
almost level, coasting the top of the cleft over which 
the aerial tramway was flung. As they came to 
the apex of the gulch trudging on, Marsden spoke. 

“The carpenters/’ he said, “that put up the 
towers, right on the tip there, surely needed to have 
clear heads.” 

“Um!” said Sam. “Look at the birds down 
there.” 

“And they’re flying below the trams at that,” re- 
plied Marsden. “Crows.” 

“There was one flew up the gulch as I crossed 
over,” said Sam. “It passed right under me.” 

“Wanted to dive after it, did you?” asked Mars- 
den. 

“Uh-hu,” said Sam. 

“Uh-hu!” said Marsden. 

A stone, spurned by his feet, bounced aside, 
seemed to leap, as with its own volition, out and 
down; and they paused to watch it. It was too 
small to note all the way, but a slight wave of a 
tree-top below showed where it had hit, and there 
rose up two ragged-winged birds, shrieking as 
though in vituperation, circling up and out of the 
gorge, sweeping up and up and then over them — 
birds that looked as though they had recently had 
a dispute, and plucked the feathers from each other’s 
head. 

“I guess the thud with which a man would go down 
there,” remarked Marsden, “would bang him into 


THE END OF THE JOURNEY 


301 


a kind of grave of his own making. Nothing to 
do but pile stones over him to keep bald-headed 
eagles and coyotes off.” He considered the place, 
a frown between his brows. “Guess they get wolf 
up here,” he said. “Last year, away below the 
Fraser Mine, I came on a bear and two cubs. Fortu- 
nately, I wasn’t between the old lady and the kids.” 

“Oh! What did they do?” 

“They were picking berries. Just sat up and 
watched me. I took a circumbend off the wagon- 
road to pass them. They watched me like this” — 
and he showed — “as far as they could, looking that 
way, and then they all gave their heads a jerk round 
the other way — like this — and picked me up over the 
other shoulder. Kind o’ weird. After I got away 
a good bit, me looking round, they began eatin’ ber- 
ries again. Well, good-bye to that gorge,” he fin- 
ished, for the road veered away again to lead over 
the lower summit to the Fraser mine. 

He did not speak again until they came to a place 
where the tramway passes over the road. One of 
the buckets was then sliding under the arm of the 
nearest trestle. 

“Sam Haig,” Marsden broke out, “you can have 
her. I’ve been figuring out what to say to you, and 
that’s it. You can have her. To say anything else 
would be out of place. But you can have her, all 
right — all right.” 

“Have who?” said Sam, very quietly. 

Marsden, very puzzled (and can one wonder at 


302 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


it?), took dumfoundered survey of the young man. 

“Why, the woman we did it for?” he answered. 
“Didn’t you ride up in that bucket to-day to show 
Mildred Henderson you weren’t scared to do it?” 
“Not on your life!” exclaimed Sam. 


CHAPTER V 


WHY THEY DID IT 

<4 TT TELL, you do surprise me!” ejaculated 
W Marsden; and after a pause — u You cer- 
tainly do surprise me, all right, all right,’’ 
he muttered, and was engrossed upon some private 
consideration. Sam, who had been in mute mood 
ever since scrambling out of the bucket, said nothing, 
but anon Marsden gave further voice to his thoughts. 
“It i one more proof of how I have been tangling 
myself up,” he said. “She didn’t make you do it? 
You didn’t do it for her? Well it beats me!” 

He was on the point of asking Sam why he had 
done it, if not at her instigation; but his own side 
abruptly and deeply occupied him. 

“She’s a storm-centre,” he continued, “that’s what 
she is. But I always thought you were after her, 
Haig. I admit it. Guess I was half crazy right 
along. I guess it was some kind of jealousy. I 

guess I was a specimen of jealous man all right. Too 
far back to tell how it was! I’ve got mixed and 
tangled up terrible. I don’t like it. Candidly, Haig, 
I don’t like it. I’ve been off my sleep even, think- 
ing about her, thinking also about why I should 
be all mixed up because of her anyhow. You see 
303 


304 > 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


she’s a kind of storm-centre ! And she enjoys being 
a storm-centre. I can’t describe it, but if ever any 
woman has mixed you up trying to find out where 
you are with her, you’ll know what I’m trying to 
tell you. You think things are going along swim- 
ming, and suddenly she turns a new way round to 
you, and puts up a proposition you never could have 
guessed was coming. Then you’re up against it. 
She’ll leave you one day with a kind of understanding 
how things are — and next day she sets you wonder- 
ing if you didn’t dream about the last meeting! I 
don’t know if you can understand, seeing I was mis- 
taken — seeing — perhaps some other woman — per- 
haps you can kind of understand, anyhow.” 

“Perfectly,” said Sam. “Quite.” 

“Well, that’s me ! And I’ve cut it out — cut it out, 
all right, all right. When I was soaring over Dead 
Man Gulch up there I saw the w r hole thing, and I 
said: ‘I cut it out right now. A woman has no 
special licence, or title’ — you get me ?> — ‘to put it up 
to a man to do a crazy thing like this for her.’ I 
would do crazier things for folks, but that’s not the 
point. The point is that there was nothing to it. 
There ain’t no sense in doing crazy things to satisfy 
somebody else’s whim. A man who was too lazy 
to walk up, and rode up that way, would be riding in 
a better cause. He’d just be lazy — not crazy! No, 
sir, when I looked at myself sitting in that bucket 
like a toad and going over Dead Man Gulch, where 
more than one has lost his head and plunked down, 


WHY THEY DID IT 


305 


and hit the Noo Jerusalem summary, I tell you, I 
said to myself : ‘Marsden, you’re a fool !’ That was 
one side. And I also said : ‘She had no right to put 
it up to you to do it.’ ” He paused. “Say,” he 
spoke diffidently, “I can’t help being curious why you 
did it. I want to treat you according to Hoyle, Mr. 
Haig, for I got to respect you. Would it be ac- 
cording to Hoyle to ask why you did it, anyhow? 
All I know is that you were there yesterday when she 
talked about it. You must have heard.” 

“I did hear,” said Sam. 

“Oh, you did! Well, that’s something. Look 
Here, then, tell me this : Do you think it is just the 
state she put me into that’s responsible for the way 
I took her remark? Do you think it was just my 
fancy that she meant it as a challenge ? I get fogged. 
If I asked her now I guess she’d be liable to say she 
never meant it. But I’m asking you. You heard — 
you were there, whatever you’ve done it for. That 
she flung that out as a whet to you and me was my 
notion of it. You say you didn’t do it for her. But 
you heard her. Do you think it was meant as a 
challenge to me, then?” 

“It was intended so,” replied Sam. “You’re not 
wrong there. It was. And I thought then that she 
had no right to say it.” 

“That’s what I think now! But say — can’t you 
tell me why in thunder you came up?” 

“I came up,” said Sam slowly, “to let her see that 
a man would do it — and not for her. You perhaps 


306 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


'didn’t notice that Miss Webley was exasperated with 
her, and questioned a woman’s right to ” 

“I did!” exclaimed Marsden, vehemently inter- 
rupting. 

“Then you perhaps noticed the suggestion Mildred 
Henderson dropped was that a man might not do 
things for Miss Webley — that she was jealous of 
them doing things for other women, but that — there 
you are! She left the rest in abeyance.” 

Marsden nodded his head up and down slowly. 

“You got her,” he said. “You got her fixed in 
your mind all right, all right. Women are queer 
that way. They seem to be running bluffs on each 
other, but it’s a kind of game all played under the 
table instead of on top.” 

“Well, I saw it,” said Sam, “and it made me hot. 
I believe now,” and he laughed at himself, “that 
it was a little knoll of a matter that I turned into a 
mountain. But no matter — it was there all the same. 
And I’ve done it. And I’m alive. And Nance Web- 
ley is worth two or three Miss Hendersons ” 

A smile showed, and spread, on Marsden’s face. 

“What — I — fail — to — see,” he drawled, “is how 
you are going to tell Mildred Henderson you did it 
for that reason!” 

Sam’s face showed gloom. 

“I know!” he said, and then — “I’m a hot-headed 
sort of fool in some ways. You were quite right 
when you told me, a long time ago, that I was moved 
by sentiment.” 


WHY THEY DID IT 


307 


“When did I say that?” 

“Don’t you recall a lecture you delivered in Web- 
ley’s garden?” 

“Oh, sure ! But that was no lecture ! I was try- 
ing to tell you, on the side, that I meant to win 
Mildred Henderson!” 

“What — I — fail — to — see,” said Sam, slowly, “is 
how you are going to act when you go down again. 
Everyone will be talking of it, and she’ll be sure to 
think you did it for her, and — * — ” 

“So I did!” commented Marsden with a grim 
chuckle. “She’ll be sure to think we both did it for 
her. But I’m not going to leave it like that. I’m 
going to call. I’m going to call and say to her: 
‘Miss Henderson, I’ve been up to the top, squatted 
in a bucket like a fool kid. I did it because you kind 
of challenged. I’ve done it, and it was a crazy thing 
for you to want a man to do just to flatter you. And 
I’ve called to tell you, so as to let you know my mind 
now, same as I’ve let you know it all along, that — 
I — won’t — trouble — you — any — more !” 

He paused, staring ahead. 

“And she will make a twist,” replied Sam, “or a 
move — neither you nor I can hazard a guess at what 
kind of twist or move — but it will put you off 
your base again, and you’ll come away all tangled 
up.” 

“You surely seem to know a lot about it!” said 
Marsden. “You seem to be a whole lot conversant 
with her. But you can throw that opinion of how 


308 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


I’ll act in the discard. I’m through ! Here we are 
at the belt of woods. If I go and see her at all I 
go right now, and get the thing finished, put the 
tombstone up over the darned silly episode, so to 
speak.” 

Despite his companion’s gravity, Sam laughed 
gently. Marsden glared; but the glare was play- 
acting, for next moment his keen eyes, that had re- 
cently been troubled at the core, twinkled. As they 
came down to the corner of Astley Street, where it 
debouches into the wagon-road, Sam saw a wizened 
and springy youth dancing uphill. 

“Here’s the interviewer,” he said, “the reporter 
man of the News!” 

“So it is,” said Marsden; “Hell bent for election! 
Guess he’s after us, heard about it from the engineer 
at the power-house after we started. Well, I did it 
for fun and you did it to show a certain lady who 
asked you to do it that you could do it for an- 
other — — ” 

“Good life, no!” Sam implored. “You mustn’t 
say anything like that!” 

The newspaper man was almost level. He waved 
his hand cheerily. 

“What do you think?” he cried. “You know that 
fellow Grosset — Kootenay Clothing Company — the 
chap,” he nodded to Haig, “you lambasted?” 

“Yes?” 

“He’s bolted out of town!” 

“Not a bit surprised!” said Sam. 


WHY THEY DID IT 


809 


“With Miss Henderson, Mathers’ sister-in-law!” 
announced The Kootenay News . 

Sam stared, for a second or two bereft of speech, 
and then — “Not a bit surprised!” he said again. 
Marsden emulated his calm exterior, and succeeded 
so well that the reporter thought it necessary to add 
explanation. His news seemed to fall flat. 

“Didn’t you know her?” he asked. “You must 
have seen her around — tall, dark, bit of gyp about 
her, terribly pretty, but spoilt by being too sure.” 

“I guess I know the woman you mean,” said 
Marsden. 

“Thought you would!” declared the reporter. 
“So-long!” 

He fled upon his exciting business, and when he 
had gone Sam’s head turned slowly toward Marsden, 
Marsden’s turned slowly toward Sam. Their eyes 
met. They both spoke the same phrase — and it was 
entirely Western. 


CHAPTER VI 


AU REVOIR 

“T TOW would it be,” began Sam, after a long 

I I silence, “seeing we’re so near, to step across 
the bridge and let the engineer boy know 
we’re all right. He may have worried.” 

Marsden smiled. He had expected some sugges- 
tion more to the point, intimate, main-line, instead 
of side-track or spur-line; however — Sam Haig was 
a man of sentiment. Such a thought, at such a mo- 
ment, was entirely in his character. 

“He’s not a worrying kid from what I saw of 
him,” answered Marsden. “I maybe don’t know all 
men as well as I reckoned, but I’m sure he’s no wor- 
rying kid. You give him credit for feeling the way 
you might — — ” 

“Or discredit,” said Sam, “for feeling the way I 
felt once.” 

Marsden launched him his sidelong stab of a 
glance. 

“Anyone who says such a thing to me about you 
I surely ain’t going to be patient with,” he an- 
nounced. “And if ever I talked to you as if I thought 
you were unfit for a hard world I take it all back.” 
And then, as if astonished at hearing his voice thus, 
and suddenly shy, he added: “All right. You go 
310 


AU REVOIR 


311 


over and tell him. I’ll see you later. I must get on 
to the office. So-long.” 

Crossing the road Sam came to the smelter bridge, 
and as he stepped on to it he heard feet running be- 
hind him, and the fluttering sound of skirts. 

“Mr. Haig! Mr. Haig!” someone called. 

He wheeled and saw Nance Webley. 

“Oh, please don’t think me interfering,” she said, 
plunging into talk at end of her run, “or mad, or 
anything, but would you mind telling me what you 
are going across this bridge for?” 

“Why, certainly,” he answered, looking down at 
her worried little face with an expression on his such 
as Mildred never saw there. “I’m going to show 
the engineer that I’m quite safe.” (Her clear and 
candid eyes were wide upon him.) “I’ve just come 
down from the summit after riding up in one of the 
buckets. I’m going to tell the engineer that we’re 
both ” 

“Both?” 

“ — Marsden and I — we’re both all right.” 

She looked ever so solemnly at him. 

“You’ve been!” she said. “You’ve done it al- 
ready!” 

“Yes. But what do you know about it?” 

“Only that I couldn’t get out of my head what 
Miss Henderson said yesterday at your ranch. I 
knew it was meant for Marsden, and — and — well, I 
wondered if ” 

“If it was up to me to go too,” suggested Sam, 


312 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“because of the way she slung it at you that a man 
wouldn’t do things for you?” Nance stared, as in 
horror. “She had no right to dare a man to do such 
a thing. But when she hinted about you — why then 
I went up. I thought and thought about it, till it 
seemed all that mattered. What a woman asks a 
man to do just to flatter her, men can do — for the 
sake of the other women that she’s turned up her 
chin at!” 

Nance did not understand; or perhaps she did, 
but wouldn’t allow herself to. 

“You did it for someone else?” she asked. 

“I did it for you,” he said. 

“But ” she began, and stuck. 

“But what?” he enquired. 

“Never mind.” Her eyes were full of tears. 

“Something is wrong with you,” he persisted. 
“What’s the matter?” 

“No, nothing,” she answered. “I thought you 
were going up too, but I didn’t dream you’d go up 
for — for that reason. I don’t know what to say.” 

“Say nothing,” said Sam. “It was up to me” 

“I don’t see why. And you might have been 
killed! How I have worried this day ! If you knew 
the grit I had to get up to set out to make sure ! I 
just couldn’t stay at home not sure either way. I 
rang up Mr. Franklin to ask if you were in town. 
That was about ten o’clock. He was out. Then I 
rang up Mr. Marsden’s office, and asked if he was 
in. He wasn’t. So I knew no more. I was no wiser 


AU REVOIR 


313 


than before, and a whole lot more restless. At eleven 
o’clock it was awful, so I rang up Mr. Franklin 
again.” 

“At eleven I went up,” said Sam. 

They looked at each other, and their gaze lingered. 

“Half an hour ago I rang up Franklin again, with 
the queerest feeling that whatever might happen had 
happened by then ! He was in at last, and told me 
he had heard you were in town, but that you hadn’t 
called at the Grand Western . And then — well, then 
I thought I’d come right along to the smelter. I 
didn’t know what I’d ask them here when I arrived. 
I was trying to think that out on the way.” 

She stopped speaking, and found Sam looking ten- 
derly down on her. 

“Well, you see how it is,” said he. “It’s all right.” 

“I can’t tell you how glad I am,” said she. “And 
I can’t tell you how I appreciate — though you 
shouldn’t have done it — your reason for going up. 
I can hardly believe it. Father always said you were 

crazy about ” she blushed, perceiving that if she 

went upon that vein she might appear to be making 
what she had no desire to make — a comparison. 

“Crazy about Miss Henderson,” Sam supplied the 
rest. 

“Yes,” said Nance. 

“Maybe I was in a way,” he admitted. “Guess I 
ought to tell you about that. Guess it’s your right 
to hear — though it will make me seem — I don’t know 
what in your eyes.” 


314 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


“It’s not my due at all!” she contradicted. “I’ve 
only butted in; that’s what I’ve done !” 

“You’ve not butted in,” he assured her, shaking 
his head. “All the way down the mountain I’ve 
hardly been able to answer Marsden’s talk for think- 
ing — for thinking about you. And say ! There was 
nothing in that Miss Henderson business. Do you 
believe me? There was nothing in it.” 

“She’s the most beautiful woman in Kootenay,” 
said Nance, “and I can quite easily understand ” 

“Rubbish!” Sam interrupted. “She’s not beauti- 
ful, not even pretty, when you look right at her. But 
you are. And I only wish I was good enough to 
think I could go right home to the ranch and know 
I was working for” — her eyes were directly on him — 5 
“you.” 

It seemed he must work for somebody other than 
himself. 

Till his last day he would never forget how simply, 
standing there on the smelter bridge of all places — 
which would surely worry the pseudo-romanticists 
who can only relish a proposal in a gondola — she 
slipped her hand into his, and said: “I am certainly 
very proud of you, Mr. Haig.” 

“Sam,” he corrected. 

“Sam,” said she, and he had never known his name 
could sound as it sounded on her lips. 

“I’ll call you Nance when I feel half good 
enough,” he said, and she thrilled at the sound of 
her name. His voice went into her heart. 


AU REVOIR 


315 


“I would like you to call me Nance right now,” 
she told him. 

So there’s the story of Sam Haig and Nance Web- 
ley, though it all began with the lure of Mildred 
Henderson. I think I adopted the best way to tell 
of both. I wanted to write it down as an onlooker; 
and Grosset on the veranda of Timpkin’s boarding- 
house was passable, but Grosset in Mildred’s 
boudoir, when the Mathers were away, is not in my 
vein. Telling it this way I was able to tell consider- 
ably more about these other people — and they are 
the people I like. 

The reporter inserted six lines in the Kootenay 
News to say that Sam and Marsden had, for a wager, 
gone up in the buckets — and he believed that was all 
the story too. There were a couple of columns every 
day for a week about Grosset, and the dollars of the 
Clothing Company that he had appropriated. He 
and Mildred can be in Chihuahua for all I care, tired 
of each other, but I am glad (as they say out West) 
to keep track of the rest. Marsden is now Mayor 
of Kootenay and is one of Sam’s best friends. Innes 
has the plateau ranch where the Chinese squatters 
used to be, and the lake one he sold to Franklin. The 
Chinamen have gone off to “squat” somewhere else, 
or to clear some parcel of land for a white man and 
make it fit for his uses, sitting rent free the while, 
and laying aside a nest-egg for China on what they 
raise on it while clearing it and preparing it, as the 


316 


THE LADY OF THE CROSSING 


method is — a method which seems to give satisfaction 
to both parties to such deals, the white and the yellow. 

One sometimes wonders if the fruit-farms do, what 
is called, tremendously “pay”; one has a surmise that 
the fruit perhaps (unless there be high system and 
combination) only pays for the running of the home 
round which the trees stand, for the fruit-growers 
have other interests besides apples — town-lots and 
“politics,” as Timpkin said. Not fruit alone, not hay 
alone, not silver-lead, not gold-mine — so Timpkin 
tells me — not petroleum-gusher, not real estate, not 
even (and he smiles) bogus estate can pay like “poli- 
tics” — which is a saying hard to fathom, as one does 
not see politics growing, nor find it anywhere “in 
place.” But no matter. In a light book one must 
not enquire too seriously. These fruit-growers, at 
any rate, have joined forces. Be Kootenay, with the 
country in which it is set, the Golconda of the boost- 
pamphlets, or the “bogus proposition” of the “knock- 
ers” (as those who decry are called out West), or 
be it somewhere between — which is probable — I 
would go back to that enchanting land, and see the 
folks again. If it be the will of the gods I shall go 
back, back again to Kootenay, hire a launch, and 
chug down to Ten Mile Point. It will be in the 
Spring, if possible, when in the cleared space under 
the evergreen pines the white foam of fruit breaks 
on the trees. 

And yet the season does not matter. I know the 
autumn pine woods, the autumn peaks, the autumn 


AU REVOIR 


317 


orchards with the apples, as Marvell said of oranges 
in the Bermudas, like golden lamps in a green night, 
quaint oases among the fixed and eternal tumult of 
the mountains and their wilder foliage. The season 
does not signify to me, so be it I can see these old 
friends again: Sam Haig, and Nance his wife — with 
her kindly hazel eyes, her utterly unaffected charm — 
that wistful, joyful, sensitive little soul who would 
hurt no living thing; Timpkin, whose goat is to-day 
seldom got, and his wife, her face now blend of 
shrewd and tender, her hands more restful, with little 
wrinkles now on their backs; Franklin, who has a 
seedy look as of yore, until you draw near and find, 
as of yore, that it is his manner; Web ley, superinten- 
dent of the line, and his wife, contented with him and 
not offended when he swears over nothings; Sing, 
too; Tom has gone back to Canton, but Sing says: 
“ ’Melica good enough for me. My fliends all gone 
in China. Oh yes ; no wi\ no lillun.” Agnostic Sing 
cares not if at the end his ashes blend with dust of 
China or dust of “ ’Melica.” He realises that all 
the world is one small star. 

Yes, I would like to see them again — those folks 
who have happened upon this planet in the same brief 
space of time as I. For this is in a way a real story, 
though it may read like romance. 




















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